Bella

If we could get back to small talk that isn't about the troll, that would be great. If you have thoughts you'd like to share with the mods, we'd be happy to take your PMs. We're very much on top of things, including secret identities, etc. You can help us by staying in touch and keeping this thread from turning into something ugly, filled with accusations and witch-hunting. Thanks!

I like the whole idea of Day of the Dead. Since we're sometimes in New Mexico on Nov. 1, we've seen some great decorations. They're always so thoughtful, with items that are meaningful to the person who passed away. I hope it's not snowing so that you can visit the cemetery. We don't have kids and I always buy candy that I like so that we can consume the extras. Reese's peanut butter cups and Twix bars are the current favorites. Lately I've been putting M&Ms into the homemade trail mix that I always have around, so maybe I'll buy some little packages and pour the unclaimed into the trail mix.

Others may differ on this, but there are three holidays of cultural importance in the U.S., four for those who practice a Christian religion. The two big family holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas*, followed by Independence Day (not as family-oriented) and Easter for practicing Christians. *Christmas can be religious, secular, or just annoying, but everyone gets the day off. However, people who were not brought up celebrating it generally don't do much. YMMV on this one. However, I think that Thanksgiving is the big family holiday. It's always on a Thursday, and a lot of people get off that Friday from work, making it a 4-day weekend. DH's extended family includes friends and the single family members' significant others in the celebration, so there are about 20 people involved, give or take. I sometimes just grab a bottle of champagne and go drink it with DH's step-cousin, a highly amusing older man I only see once a year. We joke that he's my "date" for TG. There are 2 chefs in DH's family, and their stuffing is amazing - it includes oysters and some secret ingredients. One of the men bakes pies to relieve stress after his work day, and he brings a bunch of them. Last year he branched out into cheesecakes. Mmmm. Since we travel for TG, I usually bring some kind of appetizer that doesn't spoil without refrigeration. Lately it's been marinated mushrooms, which everyone loved the last couple of years. Since they're easy and idiot-proof, I'll probably bring them again.

I took up yoga a few months ago, though I had to drop out of the most recent session due to work and vacation conflicts. It was great and I'm looking forward to starting up again when my instructor begins her next cycle. There are different kinds of yoga, and this one uses a lot of props and furniture so that it's ideal for people with stress injuries, surgical scars, etc. Since I banged up one of my hips hiking and have some other "structural idiosyncrasies," it's a good choice for me. On the ancestry discussion, my late father was a blue-eyed blonde and my mother was a green-eyed redhead before her hair turned white. So I visit dermatologists occasionally to get an overall skin check. About 25 years ago, a new dermatologist looked at a growth on my face and said that she thought it might be squamous cell carcinoma. So she removed it and sent it off to be analyzed, telling me to call for results 3 days later. I called, and they said they were redoing the lab work. They also told me to come in again. At that next appointment, my dermatologist, who was African American, gave me a really funny look, then said "that was an albino form of a mole that's normally only found on black people." I wasn't as surprised as I think she expected me to be because my mother had done our family tree and had a gap in the mid-1800s. In that gap, a young male ancestor moved from Louisiana to Ohio with a woman about whom we could learn absolutely nothing. And there was some speculation that the woman might have been a former slave or otherwise have African ancestry, which necessitated the move from the south to the north. But there were other plausible scenarios and we were only speculating, so we dropped it. DH and I were in Canada recently, where I started researching the Acadian Expulsion. Again, this relates to the Louisiana ancestors. I don't know if I've got anything worth pursuing or not, but I'm considering a writing project along these lines. It's all rather unformed at this point. But it could be fun, and it would give me an excuse to pay more visits to my friend in Nova Scotia.

We'd like to strike a balance between caring and caution. Please rest assured that the mods and others at PTV have a very good grip on the sock puppet situation. Neither we nor the researchers are going to reveal more of what we know because making it public could enable the con artists to perfect their craft, so to speak. If questions go unanswered, that is why. At the same time, it would be sad if we ended up with a witch hunt here. So let's err on the side of trusting each other, and if someone pings your radar, please tell the mods so that we can flesh out our already solid picture a bit more. Thanks!

Welcome to the lurkers! I've been online since 1993 and have about a 50/50 split of lurking in forums or being exceedingly active. I mostly lurked on TWOP. And to this day there's a site I visit every morning, as I have for 8 years and counting, where my post total is 3. OTOH, when I become active, I Am A Presence. So feel free to join the discussion, lurkers, but there's no pressure to do so if you'd rather just read. Everyone is welcome here as long as they play nice. And now we have an expanded definition of "play nice" - no scamming. Where's that eye roll icon when I need it?

OMG - that link from SomePity - one of that person's kids is named Maisie! I'm sorry, it's just too weird. I think this is all being done by some guy living in a basement apartment with 6 computers lined up on a wall. And that baby picture didn't even look real to me.

Another spin-off, first airing on Oct. 22. It looks like they're having FN stars compete against past Chopped champions. So, Super-Chopped. Or something.

I think there's definitely an audience for the show. MasterChef Junior is extremely popular, for example, and is probably the best show in the MC franchise. I think some of the grumbling is because Chopped has lost its magic, and not all of the attempts to recover it have been successful. Or tolerable.

We always assume this to be the case. We have a few tricks up our sleeves, but more importantly, we know what to watch for now.

Thanks for this, HFC. Just to be clear, we were not the ones who deleted the GoFundMe account. We took down the links, and WanderWoman apparently closed the account herself. Unfortunately, we received significant evidence that WanderWoman was perpetrating a fraud - the same long-term fraud that had been done on multiple other sites over the years. In fact, her posts here were almost verbatim from another scam done in 2008 (or thereabouts). Most of us - maybe all of us - were taken in by WW's story, even the mods. So we'd like to thank the eagle-eyed posters who couldn't ignore the nagging doubts in their minds, investigated the situation, and brought it to our attention. We're sorry this happened, but now we know what to look for. We were particularly outraged, because this is a good group full of kind-hearted people, and we hate that anyone even attempted to take advantage of you like this. If any of you ever suspect there's anything fishy going on, please PM us and we'll investigate. That goes for all of the PTV forums.

First course: Relocate to another city. Since they don't pay travel expenses, they should take a week in each of several cities and film multiple episodes there. Go to New Orleans and film 4 shows, then Santa Fe, then Chicago, then San Francisco. Bring in local chefs. Have at least one course in each episode reflect the regional cuisine. Second course: For one of the three rounds, add a fifth mandatory ingredient, since there's evidently a need to make things harder to keep the show interesting. Third course: For the second or third round, make them carry over something they made in the previous round. Do this randomly, so they don't anticipate it.

You have 20 minutes to collect your thoughts and write a post - Starting NOW!!!

That is the silver lining here - no more "kids specials" on regular Chopped. Adults only, please!

Yet.

Right, like we need this spin-off. Airing Tuesdays. And they're already casting Season 2.

Another element in the rebroadcast mystery might involve individual markets and time zones. The stations are pretty uniform across prime time, but not always, and it used to be looser than it is now. So perhaps (this is totally a guess) CBS suggested that Ep. 1 be rebroadcast, which was done in some markets but not all of them. Maybe.

Yes and no. They're all over the place like Stuckey's, but they're straight food service and better quality (IMO). I think the closest analogue stateside would be Dunkin' Donuts.

Thanks for that. When we had it we were like "okay, so it's coffee." We really did like the Chocolate Chill, though. And the omnipresence of Tim's was a plus on a road trip. If we needed to get out of the car and stretch our legs, we'd pull in at a Tim's. If we needed to look at the map together, we'd pull in at a Tim's. Etc.

I wasn't particularly thrilled that Evan got the third spot. I felt like he was the weakest of the five remaining designers. Btw, did anyone else think that Scott's "Walking Dad" looked like Bob Newhart?

There is a Bates forum in case you want to discuss them separately from the Duggars. However, site policy is to avoid and minimize political talk. There are 18 kazillion Internet sites for political discussion - this is not one of them.

The porn is squicking out some of our posters. I'm going to spoiler tag what isn't already spoiler tagged. Please be considerate of your fellow posters. And just because you have a thought about something doesn't mean you have to post it here. We're getting more and more of that lately, and this is not a "random thoughts about what could maybe possibly go on in Duggarworld" forum. The complaints are escalating, and we're to the point of just deleting stuff because it doesn't really have anything to do with anything here, it's just made up.

This is precisely why my elderly mother won't watch the show. It's too intense for her.

I'm repurposing this thread, which initially said something about naming the Canadian provinces and seemed unnecessarily vague. After a recent trip to Nova Scotia, I'm surprised more Canadian food hasn't migrated south, quite frankly. We recently had a Donair pizza, for example. That should be popular on this side of the border. We thought Tim Horton's coffee was way, way, way over-rated, btw. But the Chocolate Chill was the best milkshake-type drink I've ever had in my entire life. A friend in Toronto said that her other U.S. friends have had a similar preference for Tim's cold drinks. And despite my snarky thread title, we thought that poutine was the best bar food ever!

This show has aired in its completion in Canada but is just beginning to air in the U.S. on Oct. 13 on the Cooking Channel. To our Canadian friends: we love you. And if you've already seen this season, please don't post in this thread. Many thanks!