Bastet

Yes, if Fox still owns the rights (which I'm assuming they do).

So what's the new category?

I have some breast meat left from roasted chicken, so I'm going to make some alfredo sauce to pour over whole wheat fettucine (dry, not homemade), chicken, broccoli and the small bit of cremini mushrooms I have left.

I saw the commercial in which the cat blocks the dog from getting in her/his bed tonight, and cracked up. I have cats, but my best friend has both cats and dogs, and, yep - that's how it goes. But then they wind up back-to-back on the same bed. This morning, in response to a cat howling at me that I was not dishing up his food fast enough, I said, "Stop hollering at me; I'm your mother, not your servant." I swear he laughed.

It is, but she's such a good egg - compassionate, generous, loyal, with a self-deprecating sense of humor - I tend to shrug it off.

Every time I look at this thread, I'm reminded of something: I hate the title of this episode. A play on "Sue your daddy" wouldn't make sense, so they must be going for a play on "Who's your daddy," but since the S at the end of sous is silent, I'm annoyed. "Sous your daddy" is only clever - to me, anyway - if sous is pronounced soos. (And since only one of the family members brought in as sous chef was a father, they really should have done something with "family" in the title, but I could have overlooked that had it made sense.)

My vote shouldn't carry much weight, because the odds of me participating in an organized re-watch are slim (although I will chime in from memory), but one of the reasons I generally skip them is the schedule -- I know I'll never take the time to watch and comment on 2-3 episodes per week, so I don't even bother starting. Especially for an hour-long drama, my vote is one episode per week.

Oh my. I had heard about the episode in which Ina creates a centerpiece out of assorted tools because she's making lunch for a construction crew, but I had never seen it until I happened to go around the dial at just the right time while eating lunch. That looked even more ridiculous than it had ever sounded.

FYI since you missed it: The structure of the finale in which we got our second female winner was awful, but the two chefs competing in it were both women and both fantastic women at that. We were also treated to Stephanie, upon being asked how she felt about no longer being the only woman to have won, saying, "It's about damn time." Back to the episode, like someone upthread, I am wondering what voodoo magic Melissa works on vegetables that they are not only often highly praised, but get singled out for effusive praise when they are served alongside poached lobster universally loved and described by one as the best she's ever eaten. I want her to come cook for me! I was, however, put off by her statement shown in the beginning of the episode that she doesn't feel she's "been able to" show what she can do yet. If the contestants had been stifled by a bunch of confining challenge parameters, I could understand that, but they've had several in which they had nearly free rein to strut their culinary stuff. I felt bad for Gregory having the only dish that wasn't superb. He did it to himself, but everyone else stood there next to their family member and got showered with praise, and he was informed his sister turned out a better dish than he did. Ouch. Self inflicted, but ouch. It was such a nice, proud moment for everyone else. He seemed to take it in stride and enjoy his time with his sister, though. The Mei and Harly talking head segments were cracking me up. I wonder what sort of relationship they'll settle into.

That went over my head. But what I mean is this: If someone ordered a steak medium, and it was served that way, then it's fine. But - aside from my personal preference - in any cooking competition or instruction I have ever watched, the standard for steak is medium rare. So if Doug cooked his steak to medium, in a do or die competition in which Tom is the judge, I think tossing it and moving on to Plan B was a smart move. Overcooked protein is the kiss of death on this show.

I consider any steak done over medium-rare overcooked.

I found it mostly so-so, but so-so enough that I'd continue to watch had it been brought back. I wish it had been given more of a chance to develop, as the foundation for good storytelling was there.

When the general idea of this challenge - cook using a family member as your sous chef - was revealed by the preview after last week's episode, I was taken aback by the thought of using such a gimmick late in the game, thinking someone could go home because of mistakes made by a non-chef. So I was pleased to see this was a non-elimination EC. When Padma described how neck and neck Mei and Melissa were and said the edge was going to go to the one who showed the best leadership skills by coaxing an excellent dish out of their sous chef, I thought Mei was going to get bonus points for having a sous who can't cook vs. Melissa having one with passable skills. I figured it would be a cover for "on the basis of the competition as a whole, Mei is more deserving of an advanced pass to the finale than Melissa." And I thought it would kind of be screwing Melissa over, as her appetizer seemed more complex than Mei's and thus the edge should go to her. So I was surprised, but pleased, when Melissa's name was announced instead. I think she did a great job of breaking things down step by step in writing so that her mom could feel confident executing the dish and they could both relax somewhat and focus; Melissa probably came the closest to doing it herself as anyone could with the "you can't touch the appetizer" restriction, and that was sound strategy. Plus, Melissa's mom rocks. An aerospace engineer who is bursting with pride for her daughter even though that daughter turned out a bit different than she'd imagined or perhaps even hoped? I'm in. I'm very close to my parents, but under these conditions I'd have sounded a lot more like Mei in the kitchen than the kumbaya vibe everyone else had going on. That's just not how we roll in my family. (Mei not knowing how many years of school her brother has left or her parents distancing themselves from their daughter because she chose a different path than the one they wanted for her is not how we roll, either; I'm just saying we get snippy and then move on.)

Q is for the crowning of Butter Queen, St. Olaf's highest honor.

As I recall, President Obama essentially tried to reclaim the term "Obamacare" -- it's what Republicans were calling it pretty much from the beginning, as an insult (because, of course, anything originating from Obama is evil) and the media was picking it up, as a nickname (because everything must have a cutesy name these days), so he tried to redefine the term (a "yes, Obama cares" type deal) so that if use of the term was going to be widespread, anyway, the connotation wouldn't be negative, or at least not exclusively negative. (I prefer to say ACA.)

I don't have a problem with people being pissed she won the Lead Actress Oscar that year, especially since she should have been in the new Supporting Actress category to start with, but I do have a problem with people blaming her for it. Take it up with Louis B. Mayer and the voters he swayed. But I digress. That telephone call scene does, indeed, do everything it is supposed to do, and wonderfully. The "yellowface" casting in The Good Earth is a big stumbling block, and before I made myself tackle it I had forced myself to sit through the horrid Dragon Seed for Katharine Hepburn, so it took me a while to do. I was glad I did. It's surprising how well it came together, since the film started with one producer and director and ended with different ones. But it's uncomfortable to watch, which I've only done twice; the cast did a terrific job, but Anna May Wong should have been O-Lan (and good on her for refusing the awful Dragon Lady role).

I've bookmarked that, thank you. I don't like beans of any kind, but I've seen both my parents eat black beans; this will be perfect for when my mom has her second knee surgery later this year and I do some cooking for them.

They give the ticket to the priest (?) who runs the shelter. Golden Girls tackled a number of issues brilliantly. Homelessness was not one of them, unfortunately; that episode is a shining example of why the Very Special Episode is a subject of mockery.

Recipes are largely excluded from US copyright law. In a nutshell, a guiding principle of copyright law is that not only must a work be original, the creative portions of the work must be able to be separated from the utilitarian/functional aspects of the work (this is how a design on a t-shirt can be copyrighted, but not the article of clothing itself). Courts have consistently ruled the list of ingredients and the utilitarian directions for preparing the dish (chop this finely, stir this in at that time, reduce to this heat, etc.) are excluded from copyright protection. The guideline offered by the U.S. Copyright Office is: “Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients….. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.” So, you are generally within your legal rights repeating not only the ingredients but the directions of individual recipes, and should just stay away from replicating entire books or "expressive elaboration" within a recipe (a story of how it came about, things that are creative suggestions rather than functional directions, such as a pairing, a plating technique, etc.). For any person or entity wanting to take caution to the extreme out of uncertainly whether anything within the directions is protected by copyright law, an easy fix would be to list the ingredients as written (because that will never violate copyright law) and then describe how to put them together in your own words rather than those found in the original recipe.

And had to explain to the network execs that menopause was not a disease, as that was their suggestion for what serious illness Murphy should battle. A friend and I still do the "cigar, cigarette, joint" routine from time to time.

Apparently, I know very little about knots. But I may have frightened my neighbors yelling, "Strangers on a Train!" I liked the -let category, but there was one clue (that, of course, now I can't remember) that was phrased in a way that made me think they just wanted one of the two words, so even though I knew both I'd have got it wrong (unless Alex was feeling gracious with a prompt).

As I recall, the C-section was not planned, but the result of complications. And I definitely remember her "maternity leave" was 10 days long - four of which were spent in hospital. She has said if she could go back and do it over, she'd have put her foot down on not coming back so soon.

I think everyone who signed on to Crisis (based on the pilot script) genuinely believed it was compelling television, and that the short-run format would ensure that energy and suspense could be sustained. It's the stunning downhill slide afterward that I'd love to hear Gillian - or anyone - talk honestly about now that it's over, although they're probably just happy to leave it behind. When a 13-episode series has to be shut down for retooling after five episodes because it has already gone off the rails, you're in trouble. And that show was utter rubbish by the end (and, yes, because of her and because it was only 13 episodes, I watched to the bitter, stupid end).

I like that one (but, then, I usually like Peyton Manning's commercials ... except with that asshat from Papa John's), and I sing along with him. "Losing feeling in my toes." The Hump Day ad is back? It amused me the first couple of times, but I quickly reached lunging for remote levels of annoyance.

The hell, Oregon? I root for a Pac-12 rival in order to support the conference, and you go out and lay an egg. I want to applaud a team winning the championship with a third-string quarterback, but a) it just shows how bloated football rosters are, b) Urban Meyer, c) Urban Meyer ... At least it wasn't Saban, or any SEC team. But, damn. I really wanted a better game.