AllAboutMBTV

I'm sure those charred sweet potatoes with maple chili crisp are delicious, but that's restaurant food. I live in a small apartment and am not grilling anything. As a friend of mine says, If your oven hood or ceiling fan can't suck a sock across the floor it's useless. Friends of mine have Toni Tipton Martin's cookbook Jubilee, and I really enjoyed looking through it and copied a couple of recipes, but, man, she is just not good on TV. She comes across so... tentative. Or terrified, I can't tell which. She has gotten better on the interstitials and doesn't appear to be reading from a teleprompter anymore, so there's that in her favor.

I would never make those fiddly apple rosettes (I might just serve the pie with applesauce on the side), but it was interesting to learn how they're done. And while I'm sure ATK's multistep food processor pie crust process makes good pastry, I'll stick with a bowl and a pastry cutter, like my grandmother taught me. Also, fewer things to wash. Signed, Lazy Cook Who Does Not Own a Dishwasher.

I don't know who's doing Julia's hair on Cook's Country, but, girl, bangs are not your look. Fortunately, there were two kinds of delicious-looking barbecue to distract me.

Becky's upspeak voice used to drive me nuts, but she's really toned it down. Here's hoping Erica does the same. And soon.

I had to laugh (a little) at the ATK25 special -- a whole hour and not one mention of Chris Kimball, not even in an old photo (of which there were many). I mentioned it to a friend who works on the show who said, "The mere mention of the bowtie is grounds for tarring and feathering. No one dares." Anyway, a nice show and look behind the scenes. The OGs were so young! (Well, we all were 25 years ago...)

I gave Becky the stinkeye when she said to put the quiche crust in the freezer to chill before baking. Girl, there is NO room in my freezer for a damn cast iron skillet. I live in an apartment, and there is no chest freezer in my building's garage or basement either. I swear, ATK often forgets that viewers live in the real world and not a test kitchen/food lab. (See also: the six large glass bowls of equal size for Lan's Rainbow Cake.) And, thanks for lesson on flour hydration, but I'll make my quiche crust the way I make all my crusts -- in a bowl with a pastry blender -- the way my grandmother taught me. They're fine, and only a bowl to clean up, not a food processor and all its bits.

I call that Wouldn't Make, Would Eat. And it applies to about 85% of the recipes ATK presents. I think the last ATK recipe that I considered making was Rigatoni with Tomatoes, Bacon and Fennel, but I think it serves six and is tricky to reduce one or two servings (math!).

Erica reminds me of Early Days Becky who also was *extremely* fluent in Upspeak but has toned it way down over the years. I had to laugh when Lan was portioning out the six layers of rainbow cake and recommended using six equally-sized large glass bowls. Who has that?! Only a test kitchen lab.

Dan Souza must have got a new silent Oompa-Loompa to torture for his ATK science segments as his former O-L Joe has now moved up to presenter. Well done, sir! You seem lovely. (I have a friend who works on the show, so I knew Joe was English.)

Aren't the Brand and Video challenges basically the same? Dancing on film to sell a product/song/musical artist, which is later hyper-edited and doesn't show more than a few seconds of continuous dance. Sigh... I get what the show producers and creators are going for in this season's format, but it doesn't interest me at all. I miss ballroom. I miss disco, African Jazz, tap, popping, crump, ballet, Bollywood, etc., etc. This season has largely just been the same thing over and over. But, yeah, Madison for the win. IF this show continues and in this format, it'll be without me watching it.

So the only live dancing we get is when someone has to Dance For Their Life? The show is called So You Think You Can Dance, not So You Think You Can Be A Film Editor.

Yeah, what vibeology said. I've never understood the point of hatewatching a TV show, but I hate the fact that I'm watching this utter mess of a season (which has nothing to do with the actual dancers, of course).

All they eliminating two dancers every week from this Frankenstein's Monster of a competition? I hope so. I can't say that I'm hatewatching this season, but I do sit on my sofa and ask, What? Why? Really? as I try to figure why the producers felt the need to mess with something that wasn't broken (but, yes, could have used a few tweaks).

Re: The chicken pot pie -- I'm pretty sure I could make one pie crust for the top in much less time than it took Keith to make his latticed puff pastry one. Still, he gets points for presentation (although, as Bastet noted, presentation faltered once served).

The cherry-chocolate pie pops wouldn't be a bad idea if you left them off the stick and just called them a version of hand pies. I'd buy one in a bakery but would never make them. Speaking of never making, deep-frying is one of my recipe dealbreakers, so I was happy enough to watch Lan make lumpia but sad that she did not appear at my door with a plate of them at the end. (The jury is still out on Dan's cacio e pepe tapioca things.) Like chessiegal above, I enjoy watching ATK for techniques and foods I know little or nothing about, but so many of their recipes lately fall into the Would Eat, Would Never Make category. But then I'm a lazy cook with a small kitchen.