Jodithgrace

I'm kinda glad I opted out of American Horror Story this season. Between Fargo and Gotham, my gore and violence needs are being well met, thank you. Could this show get any darker? That said, I really love Selena Kyle. The actress that plays her is really good, and so pretty! Yes, she is morally ambiguous, as befits a supervillian in training, but she is loyal to those she cares about, and vulnerable because of them Hopefully she will rescue Bruce from the clutches of Silver and her horrible uncle. Speaking of Galavan, would it really work to almost strangle a congressman in order to get him to support your election to Mayor? It's one thing to have congressmen "in your pocket," with bribes and such, since they can't give you away without exposing themselves. But to do violence to a congressman seems a poor tactic to me. But what do i know..I'm not a villian. Poor Jim..he is always in a lose lose situation. How on earth does he ever manage to become police commissioner? Butch is obviously setting up Penguin. "Nothing undoes conditioning like a good whipping, " B.F. Skinner

Once again Ruby preempts the judges by declaring her loaf underproofed and underbaked. That fact that she was right, in no way excuses her. Leave it to the judges, Ruby! I do like her, though and am happy she made star baker, even if her "allotment" looked a bit sad, compared to professional cakes. But considering it was her first effort at decorating, I say well done! Kimberly was right behind her, and her 3D cake was adorable. So it could go either way as we reach the finals. Hopefully neither will self-destruct. Sad that Christine had to go. At this point is it sad to see anybody go. But her meringues were bad, and her guitar cake flavorless. I was intrigued by the little essay on "The National Loaf." The funny thing is that whole wheat and multigrain bread is very popular now, but I can imagine it was a shock after being used to only white bread.

Wow! Reading the links in that article was very disturbing. I'm sure that the producers of The Amazing Race had no idea, aside from the party line given by the Lion Encounters organization. And here I was just coming on to write about how jealous I was of that activity. I've been on Safari in Kenya and encountered my lions from the safety of a jeep. But to actually walk with them would have been incredible. But alas, if something seems to good to be true, it probably isn't and like some of the posters above, I also questioned the usefulness of getting lions too accustomed to humans. They probably are perfect targets! Like shooting cows in a field! Well, at least action is being taken. That said, the activities in the episode were incredible. That gorge jumping..I had to laugh as the instructors basically pushed the racers off that cliff. "Three, two, one..off you go!" At almost 65, I probably wouldn't have been up for that one, but TAR is great about giving people once in a lifetime adventures. I would have loved that canoeing task also. I assume that the racers were nowhere near those shots of the crocs and hippos. They do that on Survivor, also..show lots of snakes and deadly creatures, intercut with shots of camp life, so it looks like the Survivors are surrounded by deadly critters, but I'm sure that neither Survivor nor TAR are interested in losing contestants to deadly animal attacks, so all precautions are taken.

I actually made a Spotted Dick once, while on an International foods kick. I think it's one of those dishes that you have to be born and bred in England to appreciate. I was impressed that the "puds" all came out so well, though. I have not had success with choux pastry, but have only tried it once or twice. And I have never tried making my own puff pastry, though i have used frozen. I have seen it made on so many cooking shows, that I'm sure i could tackle it, but seeing all of that butter in person might scare me to death. Yes, it's all there in the frozen product..you just don't see it! All of the flavor combinations these contestants come up with, would never occur to me in a million years. Chocolate and raspberry is about as exotic as i get, dessert wise. I am constantly impressed week after week, with how inventive these people, who are not professional pastry chefs, can be. Sorry to see Glenn go, but he dodged a bullet last week and it was his time. This is not the time to experiment with a new way to make puff pastry! The final challenge was exceptionally challenging...everybody was totally wrung out by the end. Still rooting for Ruby and Kimberly!

As much as I dislike calling out "unfair," on a show like Survivor, I really don't think it's fair that the Angkor tribe has no food. Yes, they won the feast, but after 4 days of starvation, a bunch of meat is just a drop in the bucket..they are starved for carbs, and that's why they have no energy. I don't remember ever seeing a tribe in such poor shape during a challenge. They just looked at that pile of blocks and completely shut down. Oh God..if Abi said "twice,"one more time, I was going to reach through the television screen and throttle her! I am sorry to see Varner go. if we are stuck watching this tribe every episode, he, at least, was entertaining. Fishbach and Spencer, the robot boy, are on the same team..that's how they got the puzzle done so fast. Brains. Chaos Kass has turned over a new leaf..that's fun to watch. I wish we got more time with the other tribes, besides lowly, starving, Angkor.

I loved the way each team was issued a dog. (Though it could have been the meat aroma) The Texans don't bother me that much, so far. At least they are polite to the locals and speak Spanish respectfully (No "Andele!, Adele!" or "mucho quicko" that we have seen from racers in the past.) I was actually amazed at how many racers spoke Spanish this leg. Okay it's not Hindustani and a lot of Americans have studied it in school, but still it seems like more teams than usual. I'm not a fan of the God bothering, though, and they can quit that any time. I don't mind the rivalry between the Texans and Justin and his partner, if he has one. Justin irritates me, so I am Team Texans for this one. I had liked the track stars but they kind of blended into the masses this leg. Sorry to see the dancers go. Funny, but this would have been the leg where it would be appropriate to mention their homelessness and working the 5 jobs thing, and they didn't say a word about it. Two tasks that involved matching things to a model. I find those tasks kind of inherently boring. I prefer more action than watching teams try to figure out what detail they screwed up. If I were the non performing member of a roadblock, it would be hard for me to remember to keep my mouth shut, and not shout out the answers. No wonder the watchers are always yelling out the same stuff over and over again "C'mon, Teammate! You've got this!" I'm surprised that more people aren't penalized for this, since it must be maddening to sit and watch a teammate screw up, when the answer might be perfectly obvious to YOU. Personally, in this case, I think that a 30 minute penalty was fair. It's not like she got up and turned the meat for him. There may be a longer penalty for physically helping during a road block or for repeatedly yelling out instructions.

As a practitioner of Improv (my group is called Nutty by Nature) improv scenes in tv shows always crack me up. Our group doesn't do long form, which this seemed to be, but no matter..I still love it. Jimmy is perhaps the world's worst heckler. His heckles are hilarious, but only to us, the TV audience, for their total joke incompetence. And he seems to have a list for every occasion. My DVR cut off last week before Gretchen snuck out and I thought that I had missed something major when i read about it, but then this week, it was as though nothing had happened. But then I caught it this week, so i guess it's a recurring thing, and we know not what she is up to. She is, as we know, the worst, so it could be anything. I loved Lindsay and her news mashup between extremes of Fox news and PBS..I feel the same way sometimes. I seem to be bombarded by both sides of every issue these days until I don't know what the hell I believe any more! But at least she could forget about it all at the first mention of sign language Amy! I'm not so lucky.

Well, I have to say that this show did not achieve the goal which i had set for it. I was watching this show to see if it made me interested in watching The Original Recipe TWD. It did not. I do not like zombies, and surrounding them with a bunch of bad actors and a stupid plot did nothing to make them more palatable. I gave it a shot. but I am out. There are plenty of other shows I can binge watch when I get some free time, but TWD will not be one of them. It was fun hate watching with y'all. Adios.

Well, the first thing I had to do after the episode was look up "Helter Skelter" in an non-Manson context. It seems to be a carnival ride, like a roller coaster down a large cone. (American here) I did know what a Dalek was, however. Tulles are notoriously difficult because of the timing. I haven't made them myself, but I've seen them on other cooking shows. The templates were a very useful tool. I think that too heavy a squirt of chocolate batter made them too thick. I cringed when I saw the bendy ones. I was seriously worried about Kimberly this week. As well as Ruby. Thank goodness they were safe. That Bavarian clock was amazing, though, so I was fully behind the star baker. (sorry..her name escapes me.) I agree that various tea flavored biscuits might be boring, but that was a beautiful tower. The problem with being the first poster is that i am notoriously poor with names and rely on previous posts to save me, but I agree with the Rocket Scientist being sent home. He did have a good run, but he was ultimately a better scientist than a baker. Why is Mel always there when disaster happens? She wasn't touching anything, but she seems to be a tad unlucky.

They never did establish whether it was better to have pre-cooked the custard for those tarts, did they? I lost track of who cooked theirs and how they turned out, though not a lot of people had any success at all with that recipe. I recently made a Clafouti, which is a baked custard dessert with no crust, and I did not pre-cook that custard, but perhaps having a crust makes a difference. Sorry to see Ali go, but at this point I'm sorry to see anybody go. The bakers are all so delightful. I was pleased to see Kimberly finally get the win. Though Ruby has rallied amazingly since the first episode. Both have become serious threats to win it all. We Americans really suffer from lack of imagination when it comes to desserts. Yes, we have a large assortment of ice creams, cakes and pies, but we don't even come close to the bounty of British or European desserts. From Spotted Dick, through Treacle Tarts and Eton Mess, British "puddings" win the prize. And watching these lovely people bake them is a real treat.

All i could think when I saw that Emmy dress, was that it was designed in a Team challenge, where the designers couldn't agree on anything but the color yellow.

Actually, from what I recall, the racers didn't get their backpacks (and let's not forget their fitbits!) until after the water bike race when they got their first clue from Phil. I wondered myself, when they got into the cabs, where their giant backpacks were. But they couldn't have them on the pontoon bikes, so when they hit the wharf, there they were.

I am really excited about this leg because 5 years ago my husband surprised me with an Amazing Race for my 60th birthday. We went to Brazil and took that exact helicopter ride around Rio. It was incredible. So I appreciated the superfan couple..until he started crying about everything. Ugh. I dislike TMZ and was glad Team TMZ got Philiminated. Those slide puzzles have a trick to them, which I do not know..though you can be sure that I would learn it before going on TAR (or Survivor, for that matter) if you know the trick they can be done quickly; if you don't...well, we saw the result. I didn't see enough of the teams to choose a favorite. Team Beefcake is too obvious. I think maybe the Track girls or Alex and Adam. I kind of like the homeless dancers, also, for some reason. We'll see. Yay! TAR is back. Still loving' the Friday nights.

Everything about this episode was awesome. (I'm bingeing season 1, in preparation for season 2) I loved the horrible rap lyrics, and I loved the prequel to Jimmy and Gretchen meeting, and the ring explanation. Vernon is the worst, but I actually like Paul. I'm always a sucker for nerds, and he is such a sweet one. Lindsay doesn't deserve him.

This was a fun episode, but I am confused about one thing. Do the actually have English muffins in England? I had always thought that what we call English muffins in the US are actually crumpets, which are made on a flat top grill and look similar. However, "English muffins" as created by Thomas, is a totally American invention. I'd like to try those homemade ones, however. I was happy to see Ruby pull herself together this week, and actually make star baker, since she almost went home last week. The woman who went home..I've forgotten her name..really needed to step up her game. She ignored all of the hints, which were downright heavy handed by the end there, to do something to actually compete, but she didn't and therefore had to go. I can't believe that Mel (or Sue?) leaned her elbow on somebody's English muffin. Sometimes I think they get a bit too involved..helping move a bread, or whatever, and really need to step back a bit.

Oh my goodness! I had no idea we were going back in time. LOL It's funny that somebody commented that Mel and Sue seemed less annoying than in the previous season..Oops I guess that they get worse as time goes on, then, not better.

Modern day angel food cake pans come with little "feet," so you can cool the cake upside down. Back in my mother's day, when she made an angel food cake, she would put it on a wine bottle to hold it upside down. I don't think I've ever made one from scratch, myself, though I did know not to grease the pan. Angel food is a great diet cake, if that's not an oxymoron, since it is fat free and goes well with fresh fruit for not too many calories. I love this show..it is so completely British. The contestants are so real, and the only drama is with the bakes, themselves, which is plenty for me. I don't need the interpersonal infighting you get on American competition shows. That student baker has big shoes to fill after Martha's impressive showing last season. She isn't getting off to a great start. Love the engineer. They say that there were 10, 000 applicants this season, so the bakers must have shown impressive chops to have gotten this far. Unfortunately, pressure can get to anybody who isn't used to performing out of the privacy of their own kitchen, so we have weekly failures.

I'm sorry, Walking Dead fans..I am really trying with this show, but it is just so..stupid! When Madison and her husband finally meet up in "the desert," what are they planning to eat? Madison told Tobias, who talks like he's already half zombie, that she has food; but if her pantry is anything like mine, it's full of half boxes of pasta, seltzer and assorted exotic condiments. Certainly not enough for a family of four (or more) to live an indeterminate amount of time, even if you assume that junkies don't eat much. Alicia already wasted a precious can of soup on him! But yet she left that stash of food sitting in the front entrance of the school..because.. When she and Tobias got into the car, i assumed that they were going to drive the car to the entrance and load it up. Sure they were scared and traumatized (not that they showed this in any way) but this is survival, folks! Instead she drops Tobias off with his limp little backpack and not so much as a can of beans. I spent the rest of the episode worrying about the damn food!

Maybe instead of the Tim Gunn save, they should give him the Tim Gunn AUF...when the judges announce that somebody like Blake has won, he could step up and say, "Nope..not gonna happen." And send him home, to boot! I can actually see Blake being in the top because that dress was innovative, but the winner? No way. And personally, he is just so annoying. Totally agree with the auf, though. Still a couple of bottom feeders to get rid of before we can really see who the strong competitors are going to be. Swapnil is definitely one of them, if he can reign himself in, and Ashley also. I loved her dress tonight, though it wasn't unique. I'm not a fashionista, so i would rather see a well made lovely dress than an innovative piece of crap that would have to be completely remade before you could walk outside the door in it..but that's just me.

Funny story about Little Women. I first read it at age 7! I was a precocious reader and it was the first "chapter book," as my kids called it, that I ever read. It WAS a condensed version, which I didn't realize for many years, until I read it as an adult and it was like 3 times longer than I remembered! But anyway, I was so young that I didn't always get the Victorian style of writing, and as a result I didn't know that Beth had died until several chapters later. As I recall LMA said that she was "well at last." Terrific! She got well! And I certainly didn't expect a character to die..I was seven! Anyway, several chapters later LMA refers to the period since Beth's death, and I was, what? Beth DIED? I was totally shocked.

I've never seen TWD (shock, I know!) I thought maybe I'd watch this show, which is essentially a prequel, to see if I wanted to invest the time in catching up with TWD. I have to say that it was..okay. Some things had me muttering at the tv..Travis going to the church alone at night..has he never seen a horror movie? Nick was giving me such strong Johnny Depp vibes that it was actually starting to annoy me. Those old man clothes were just exactly what Johnny Depp would insist his character wear..even that ludicrous shrug in the opening scene! Everybody's reactions in the final scene were way too calm..from the reaction to "I shot Cal, " to Cal coming after them with unsavory intent. Where's the fear, people? Remember the name of your show! I too want to see the progression..my favorite part of the book, The Stand was the spread of the virus. Is LA going to completely go to hell in just 6 episodes? I'm in for a bit longer, but I hope these people smarten up fast or get eaten quickly.

I got The Martian, but have to finish A Manual for Cleaning Women first. I'm of mixed opinions about "..Cleaning Women." It got terrific reviews and the writer's life was certainly interesting, but it's not really grabbing me. The best part about it is that since it's short stories, I can put it down and pick it back up. But the stories are really all over the place, as was her life, apparently.

I just finished two wonderful books. The first is The Little Paris Boookshop, by Nina George, about a man who has a bookshop on a barge in the Seine. He dispenses books as though they were prescriptions for emotional ailments, though he is unable to cure his own heartbreak. Something changes and he finds himself on a Huckleberry Finn type trip down the canals of France into Province. It has food, gorgeous scenery and wonderful writing. There are even recipes and book "prescriptions" at the end. The second book is called Kitchens of The Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradel. This book is about a young talented chef named Eva. Each chapter is almost a stand alone short story, except that each features Eve..either as the main ingredient or just the vanilla extract, so to speak. It is charming and quirky..also with recipes.

I've been scratching my head lately over the new ad for Viagra. The ad is all voiceover, the usual stuff, while an attractive woman wanders around her stylish apartment and out onto her lovely balcony. But there is nary a man in sight, impotent or otherwise. So, how does Viagra fit into this picture? Oh, and she looks perfectly content, not like she's waiting for somebody or about to leap off the balcony from loneliness.

I could never understand chefs on some shows getting dinged for using frozen puff pastry, because puff pastry is extremely time consuming and labor intensive, and just doesn't fit into the format of most timed cooking shows. But IMO, there is no excuse for using store bought biscuit dough. Biscuits take 5 minutes to make! I had liked Alex, and though he was cute in a Peanuts character kind of way, but he did not know how to talk on camera, and so he had to go. Family reunion could have been a slam dunk for him.."We all love Aunt Betty's eggplant parm, but in the summer it's too hot, so we make it into a sandwich," or whatever. I had a least 20 ideas, none of which were hot soup. Oh well, I guess next week they are congratulating themselves on final three, when, surprise! in comes the spoiler from Star Salvation to much shock and dismay. Never seen THAT before..can't wait.