akr
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Posts posted by akr
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Oh, God, it's chicken and waffles week everywhere (masterchef last Wednesday). Enough already! Even though that particular version sounds ok. Did they coordinate with Gordon Ramsay?
When IHOP is on the bandwagon, and Popeye's version (waffle-flavored coating rather than actual waffles) was three years ago, it is time to cut it out on network TV shows. Has Taco Bell done a fried chicken waffle taco yet? I would assume the only thing stopping them is lack of fryer space for the chicken - they've already complicated things enough with the "fancy" offerings from whatever celebrity chef gave her name to some pricier fare there. .
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Ha! Honestly, though, the only one I could have named off the top of my head is anise - and I would have hesitated, and would have been right to do so, because the anise flavor is from star anise and fennel (the others are cloves, cinnamon, and szechuan pepper - although what's been in the US versions during the long period of not being able to get szechuan pepper for agricultural quarantine reasons, I don't know). And that's without even getting into the other variants (some of which do use anise seed, if my googling is to be trusted).
Edit: however, of course, I'm not the one who said on a food network show that it was my favorite spice, thus prompting the question - but I'll bet he never makes that mistake again, and not just about the five spice powder, but about not being prepared for a question like that.
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Which could make this more a sober living situation, or housemate to save money situation, or both, rather than a case of her immediately shacking up with someone. It probably is best she not be living back where she was, or at her Mom's house, as both are classic setups for a relapse - no change in context, or emotionally charged living situation that triggers the desire to turn to old coping mechanisms. A classic SLE/halfway house sort of setup would not be good for someone with her high profile, or fair to the other residents, as it would put them all at risk when the spotlight is on - I wouldn't trust a bunch of barely clean addicts in this situation. Nor is it an appropriate place for her kids to be, nor is it necessary to disrupt her relationship with her kids in that fashion.
That may sound optimistic, but If something like this is the case, I wouldn't expect that to be the way it was breathlessly covered by gossip sites.
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"That’s like their job; that’s like their profession.”
It sounds like she thinks hater is an actual job. Maybe she should tell Kale.
Well, if she means people who write gossip columns - Perez Hilton and the like - I suppose it is. But it's also an easy way to discount any criticism from anyone else, especially if it is on the internet. Some people have fans, and some people have "haters," and while some of that is unfair, it also has a lot to do with what you put out there.
I don't think I hate her. I'm just gobsmacked and sad and hope that family and the courts can protect her kids from her while she grows up - if she does. She didn't ask for my pity, either, I suppose, but she's well compensated for it and could choose to behave better and/or stop putting her life on TV.
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When you're 50 plus pounds overweight, not 10 or 20, dressing to look a tad slimmer doesn't really accomplish much anyway (all anybody fixated on weight will remember anyway is: large. I worked in a medical office once where, literally, people were unable to remember whether they had seen the blonde medical assistant who was 5'2 or less and maybe 30 pounds overweight, or the one who was 5'11 and 70-100 pounds overweight - never mind one was basically petite and one loomed over almost everyone, man or woman, and their ages and personalities didn't have much in common; or ask anybody who's 50-100 pounds overweight and loses half of that whether anybody even noticed - NO.)
It's better sometimes to just acknowledge the fact that you're large, which you're not going to be able to obscure with clothing anyway, and go ahead and dress like an interesting person for whom this is not your only defining characteristic. Granted, when I'm big (I've been both), I don't want to exaggerate it, but I also don't enjoy looking like a sad person who's trying to hide (and when I do, I'm more likely to want to eat something to make myself feel a little better, which obviously doesn't help! Feeling good about yourself, and dressing like you have some respect for yourself, is a good step towards being healthier, emotionally at least and probably also physically, and possibly even losing some of the weight).
Ashley, for example, is not going to look like a skinny person no matter what she wears. She might as well enjoy living in the body she's got rather than try to find something "slimming".
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She's chosen the cover - I think it's fair to interpret that as an attempt at self-definition or declaration. I don't use it to judge her worth as a human being but it's a decent predictor of whether or not I'll like her aesthetic, or be likely to want to hang out with her (probably not particularly, but so what).
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I've not made a history of watching this show, but have watched the last few episodes just because it makes my jaw drop and people comment on it here . . . I guess I was prepared to believe anything. I feel a little stupid for posting that, but on the other hand, if I hadn't, I'd have persisted in my delusion. Thanks for clearing that up, everybody.
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I'm thinking this is on of those pages a fan will put up. I can't see Babs ending her shift at the deli counter and going home to post on Instagram. Barb probably still has a flip phone.
God, I hope you're right. [looked again - pretty sure you are]
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Never looked at the Mom's instagram before - she's utterly toxic, too. Why does all this need to be online? Good lord.
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Looked like Kate was lucky to get out of one of those failed lifts they showed without tearing something in her shoulder (he lost control, she fell out of it, but their arms were still tangled). Sure, he made sure she didn't fall on her head or anything, but he really didn't know how to save a failed lift safely, it seemed.
Asaf did seem to be a narcissist (most guys that pretty are - it takes a certain level of narcissism to get there in the first place) but I also wonder if cultural styles might have been part of the disconnect - i.e., he thinks he's trying to be helpful in offering suggestions about how to accommodate his limitations, but to everybody else it's just meddling. Doesn't matter in the end, though, if he can't do the job well. I'm skeptical that he'll be motivated to get better at the stuff he doesn't do all that well, though. I'm not sure the interest is there.
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Well, it's not like they had any footage of him actually cooking that they could use!
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That's an intestinal parasite - just means it wasn't properly cleaned and was grown somewhere with lousy sanitation. But maybe careful restaurants and skittish customers means you'll be spared the addition of gratuitous cilantro for a little while! (I like cilantro - not genetically programmed to have it taste like soap - but it's a strong flavor and doesn't everywhere. I hope people provide adequate warnings for cilantro haters if they include it in dishes where you wouldn't expect it to show up.)
Things I don't want - papayas (ripe; the green ones are fine); truffles. Fortunately, the former does not seem to be trendy, and the latter is expensive and so rarely shows up where I don't expect it.
edit - i see somebody got there first! I always take way too long to revise and reconsider . . . . and by the time I'm done, I could just as well have kept my mouth shut!
Wishing you cilantro-free outings for a while ;)
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Here's a really interesting article on Alex. http://www.welovedc.com/2014/10/09/capital-chefs-alex-mccoy-of-dukes-grocery/
Parents grew up in London, mother a chef, father a government official; he went back a lot as a kid and drew inspiration from there; has worked with Marco Pierre White among others; sounds passionate about making sure to go to a place to really learn the cuisine, etc. I definitely understand why they cast him; too bad he couldn't figure out an angle, or how to present himself better, fast enough to shine on this show, but probably better for him to keep cooking and starting restaurant projects than to get sucked into TV purgatory at this stage of his career.
If you prioritize it, travel doesn't have to be that expensive, especially to the kinds of places that interest him. Just get yourself there and then you can get by on very little money. And on some of these, I'm sure he was able to write it off as a business expense, or have someone finance it as an investment in the business (a couple of thousand dollars for Alex to go to Thailand for a month and come back not just with some ideas but with some passion and salesmanship that allow you to push the resultant dishes and charge more for them; versus spending a little extra on silverware for the restaurant).
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Did Alex say he was using soba during the prep time, rather than ramen? It looked like ramen, when they were tasting it, so maybe I mishead, but if you're using soba - it's not ramen! . . . Definitely did not fit the challenge and he struggled with the presentation because he was trying to shoehorn it in and because he's just not very good at that, I guess, and yet it's still the only thing I'd particularly want to eat of what we were shown. Eddie did manage to make those pasta noodles look successful, though, and it was perfectly suited to the show idea, and he's very relaxing to watch on set.
I can't really remember ever having seen Katie Lee before, but I agree that her voice is really annoying. The accent wasn't the issue to me so much as the vocal fry, I think, but the show was almost over before I thought to analyze it, and really I just don't care. She seemed vapid and stiff on camera; whatever her virtues may be, being on TV does not bring them out.
So, I guess Alex owns a restaurant. Maybe if it were in my neighborhood, I'd be inspired to go more often. Hope he gets a little business out of this, anyway, since his food sounds good. Actually, I just googled him and it all makes more sense that it ever did on the show. He was a co-founder of what sounds like a really good sandwich-centric place called Duke's Grocery, in Dupont Circle (DC), and left to start a southeast Asian style restaurant, after first going on an extended research trip to Asia to really immerse himself in the cuisine as it is in Asia (as opposed to just what he probably knew as a DC food lover and maybe prior travels). Duke's Grocery seems like it had a little bit of an east London inspiration. It all sounds good! Whether it's better than or equal to the competition, I have no idea, and Eddie's quip about "Alex invades Asia" as his potential cooking show title highlights exactly what's presumptuous about it - but you know it, it is inspiring food, and I'd eat it while also continuing to frequent the restaurants run by people who grew up eating Thai or whatever else. It's more open-ended global fusion, I suppose, than a pretense to authenticity, although drawing on stuff from his travels that makes it not just what you'd pick up by going to the already-existing local ethnic restaurants.
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I lived abroad for a year between my junior and senior year in college, and it was hard getting back that nobody wanted to hear anything about that time (which kind of meant I was stuck without anything to say at all sometimes, it seemed). It was time that really shaped me, and I had things that I'd picked up that seemed pertinent although I wouldn't have called myself an expert, just someone who'd learned a little more than I knew before I went. I couldn't talk about local stuff because I hadn't been there. So I sympathize - it's what he's drawing his excitement and influence from, but it shoves in other people's faces that they haven't been there, and you're right, his understanding of it is just that of an appreciative visitor. Still, he seems to have good instincts about what to bring back with him; he just hasn't figured out how to talk about it in a way that draws us in.
Eddie quipped on the main show that Alex's show could be called, "Alex invades Asia." But not without stopping off in London on the way, I guess.
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Was that a dinosaur on Alex's necklace?
I thought it was a kangaroo, but you could be right. I liked it.
I thought they all did pretty well, but maybe we were just made to think that so that we would have no clue who would be going through. Rue's poached salmon with crispy Brussels sprouts certainly had nothing to do with Zimbabwe so far as I can tell, except I suppose to the extent that south Asian influences on African cooking showed up in her spice choices, but they show up in everybody's spice choices at this point. It looked lovely, but a little obvious, and I thought she was the stiffest on camera. Also, I find her too-bright lipstick and fake eyelashes distracting when she's cooking. I want to focus on what you're doing, not notice, as you're looking down at your food, that your eyelashes don't look real. Alex's sauteed leek and onion grilled cheese sandwich looked and sounded great, and like something I could do a fair imitation of on the strength of watching what he did, and the segment looked ready for one of those shows of theirs about favorite this, favorite that (which I can't watch more than 10 minutes of because I get fatigued by all the over-the-top enthusiasm). Dom's lamb sounded great but I'd definitely skip the cauliflower puree, although I guess it was a useful tip tossed in there to add the grated raw potato to thicken it up . . . I'd be worried about what that would do to the taste, though. Again, though, it's just grilled lamb - it's nice, but I know how to do that already.
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Seems like the pool of people willing to get a tattoo for a TV show is bound to include people who want to be a PITA on the show, especially if something about the person who's going to tattoo them ticks them off; as well as people who think oh, shit, when they realize a contestant wants to put something big and permanent and stupid on their bodies, and doesn't care what they think about this - and has been assigned to do their tattoo by another contestant who thinks he's going to screw it up.
I thought the wolf in the armpit was a bear until you guys kept calling it a wolf here.
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Depends on what the sauce is for, I think -- would you agree that Frank's Red Hot and butter don't make a sauce? I'm not saying buffalo wings aren't frat boy cooking, but they are delicious!
This risks getting into how-do-you-like-your-steak thread derailer status, but fair point. Red Hot & butter is a sauce. Garlic and butter is a sauce. A sauce doesn't have to be complicated, but it ought to make the dish better, not worse. Cream and sriracha, both of which I like, sounds like it would probably be unpleasant, or at best about in the ballpark of using ketchup as spaghetti sauce. Whoever it was who tried to play that up to the camera as "all you need" to make a good sauce just came off to me as dishonestly pitching something awful to the camera for game show purposes, rather than telling me about something that actually might work. I'm sure you can make a "sauce" of ketchup and cream, too, or mayonnaise and chocolate, but it's going to take some doing to get me to taste it.
These people need to retain at least a little credibility as cooks, or at the very least as reliable food critics, in order for me to consider listening to them about food.
I am, however, apparently willing to watch them make buffoons of themselves.
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I like sriracha, especially on eggs or sausage. It's garlicky and sweet as well as hot, and has some other stuff in it too. I only buy the rooster brand; maybe quality varies. But boy is it overused on the Food Network and elsewhere. It's like when a little kid discovers ketchup and decides it needs to go on everything. Whoever it was - I think on this show - who thought it was enough to put sriracha and cream together to make a sauce - that is lazy fratboy cooking, and worse yet probably unsuccessful lazy frat boy cooking (add some to your ramen noodles, sure, why not, but sriracha and cream is a sauce? Yeah, right up there with Honey Boo Boo's mom's ketchup and spaghetti recipe) lost all credibility with me straight away. I don't need "food authorities" telling me nonsense like that, that obviously isn't going to cut it.
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Arnold said framboise and just meant raspberry? I assumed he meant the liqueur. But in any event I not sure I could have understood from his presentation, as opposed to from the setup with Damaris when he was figuring out how to present, what it was that he was presenting, other than some sort of fried sweet something or other.
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I don't mind Halloween as a holiday, but I don't want to feel obligated to do more, food-wise, than have a bag of fun-size candy bars on hand for the kiddos. it's also fun to compliment them on their costumes. I suppose I could be amused watching something on TV about making spooky food, but I'm not going to copy it.
Love bugs from Arnold was cute, and he annoyed me less than usual. I didn't mind Alex, for a change, and the food actually looked good and made sense as a fourth of July dish when he talked about heading down to the beach for the holiday with his friends (until he did that, there was a disconnect about what yet another random sandwich had to do with the fourth of July). Jay's was fine, once he left out the part about his grandfather dying ON Thanksgiving day. But I agree with others - what a weak group this is!
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I watched Star Salvation and 20 minutes later couldn't remember which of the women had been cut (it was Emilia). I thought both were pretty meh, and although they said Rue got the nod for being more comfortable talking about her food, or presenting or it, or something like that, I thought that she was kind of unpleasantly shouty in her spot - in person I would have backed away a little to get away from someone not modulating their voice better - and it still seems like her version of Zimbabwean food is just mediocre British or American fare. This time, chili con carne with Texas toast that she "made" by slicing bread thick and grilling it. Yes, she added the surprise mandatory ingredient of sorghum syrup to the dish, and said something evocative (it's like syrup combined with coffee) to describe it, but she has not made Zimbabwean food sound interesting, nor has she persuaded me that she is an interesting cook in her own right. Emilia made a somewhat appealing salad of roasted and raw squash blossoms with a (rather blond) fried squash blossom, that overall looked ok but nothing special, and I'd say the same for her presentation.
Dom officially got through on the strength of his food. I actually thought his presentation was the best, too, but they said he seemed nervous. I didn't really see it., and thought what he said and did was natural and intelligent, and the food actually sounded good, which is the key to keeping me engaged enough to not change the channel. I haven't seen the regular show yet, but I think they can get their six Sunday a.m. shows out of him without too much fuss, and then during that time see if they can't develop his ability to perform in other settings. I guess I'm not the target audience, though, or the failure to fill air time moments are just utter deal killers (which is certainly plausible). It's probably moot anyway, since Eddie is clearly easier to work with and easy to watch. I suppose some of the others still on have their merits as well. Rue is just there for gender balance, I think, at this point.
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No, it's scheduled for the 28th.
That King Tut miniseries they were shilling last week was on instead.
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I haven't watched last night's show yet - but I'm actually preferring having groups dancing to pairs dancing, which to me got really boring. I had basically started to tune out of past seasons after auditions because I was sick of ballroom and preferred what the dancers did in their auditions (which is show off what they do well) to what they did in most of the choreographed couples dances. So, the reboot got my attention because it got rid of things I had gotten tired of - but obviously it's bothering people who enjoyed exactly those aspects of the show. I enjoyed the episode last week, for the most part, and based on the comments here I'm looking forward to seeing Jaja & Jim, at least, this week. I actually intend to watch this episode! Last couple of years at this time I was already done with the show for the year, or at least until they winnowed out some of the chaff.
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Best Models in Top. Model. History.
in America's Next Top Model [V]
The only thing I remember from that cycle is how to pronounce Katarzyna!
And for the record: Elyse. Periodically I wonder what she is up to now.