Mondrianyone

This needs to go on a T-shirt. I'm sorry, @bilgistic. It sucks to be fired. But just remember, it's an ill wind that blows no one any good. You're freed up to go someplace better now.

It's the plutonium.

I'm pretty sure that $25,000 was the winner's prize. I'm talking about the finalist who didn't win.

I meant to post about this on the night of the finale episode, but seeing this thread active again just reminded me. Could FN have cheaped out any more on the non-winner's cash prize? I was so shocked when they said that Jodie was getting $2,500 for her charity. That's the same amount everyone else got, all the way back to the very first contestant eliminated. Isn't it worth something to make it to the finals and cook a dish that might even have been better than the winner's? At least double the amount, for heaven's sake. I'm pretty sure they can afford it.

I think it's much more about the compliance than the neatness. The more rebuked and devalued he can make her feel, the better he likes it. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion she's part of this game, too. She has to get something out of it, or she'd already be gone.) Thank God someone said it. I've been champing at the bit.

I don't think I've ever seen someone's tongue swell up from a piercing. Maybe she's got the tongue version of Pinocchio's nose--it grows whenever she says something mean. She should be carrying it around in a wheelbarrow at this rate.

I had to Google. The nearest ones are in Mass, several hours away. The closest thing we had to a local bagel place was a food truck that parked 20 miles away for six months, called Bob's Ugly Bagels, and the name did not lie. But next time I visit the nearest IKEA (also in Mass--we have nothing), I'll check out Bruegger's!

Please PM address of deli/bagel shop ASAP. Putting on my shoes right now. 🥯

I'm not a doctor (although I do pretend to be a dermatologist since I started watching Dr. Pimple Popper), but I coincidentally had to look this up a few weeks ago, and I'm diagnosing Emily with macroglossia, which means basically that your tongue's too big for your mouth. It's a function of a number of different health conditions, none of which I hope she has. But it seems sort of ironic that someone who never shuts up seems to have more reason than most people to do just that.

Egg-enriched dough, like challah. No egg hidden inside the bagel, though that's an intriguing idea. Like Greek Christmas bread! We used to get bagels straight out of the oven, from a dedicated bagel place. The couple of times I've had Lender's . . . not so good. The only frozen supermarket bagels I find edible are Ray's of Brooklyn. But I'd accept an invitation to @MargeGunderson's place once she perfects those cheddar bagels. (No jalapeños. My Jewish grandmother is rolling in her sombrero at the thought.)

Maybe so. But I generally find it's iffy to project personal experience so globally onto a total stranger with no real evidence to go on. Anyway, if you read my edit, it turns out that the restaurant had excellent reviews long before Robert showed up, which calls into question pretty much everything about their poor-mouth self-portrait. I think they just wanted the RI windfall. MMV.

Since I left NYC, I have not seen a single egg bagel, my very favorite flavor. I know it sounds disgusting, but they don't taste eggy at all, just a bit sweet and rich. Maybe they're going extinct. The best ones I had were made by a Filipino guy, of course.

Unless the treadmill is some really obscure brand, I'm sure you can find a replacement remote somewhere--Amazon, eBay, the mfr's website. Otherwise it would be like buying a whole new car because the tailpipe fell off. Don't do that!

That's where the Nazis went after WWII. I guess the racists must be going there now, too.

That soliloquy from Merchant of Venice was so embarrassingly bad that my advice to the wannabe-actor son would've been "Don't quit your day job," but he stank at his day job, too. I'm going to guess that his mother told him his whole life that his poop smelled like roses, and he believed her, at least consciously. Now she wants to end her life with a shred of hope he'll have some means of supporting himself after she's gone, but it's not looking promising. And he wants to have the restaurant handed to him without his actually having to do any work, so he said what everyone wanted to hear to make that happen. His poor wife enables him as well. Oy. Robert's croque monsieur was actually a croque madame, which is what it becomes when you put an egg on it. I'm one of those people who hate putting an egg on everything. But I totally agree that the French toast looked fabulous. ETA: After peeking at the FN gossip page and various other review sites, which have great reviews of both food and service, I'm guessing that the conditions at Grumpy's were faked to get the free makeover and so that Florence Olivier could get his audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company on TV. I should be more skeptical in the future.

Yes, this was the exact wording they demanded!

If we had passed the letter on to the lawyers, I would've known this. But we didn't, because we preferred to be outraged. So I just learned something! This guy had that same faith in himself. I have to say I was totally freaked out when he began to cry. I mean, what grown-up does that??? But then it started to feel kind of good.

I hate Scrabble, too, though I love word games in general. Too damn slow. (I also hate it because when I worked at Country Living magazine, we got a lawyer's letter from Scrabble saying we were never to use the name of the game without the copyright symbol or face legal action. We assured them we would never mention Scrabble again. Way to cut your nose off to spite your face.) I once made a guy cry by beating him at Trivial Pursuit. He'd never lost before. That's because he'd never played against me before. Bwah-ha-ha! 😈

Congrats on Cosmo's great report! He looks wonderful. When we still had dogs, I cooked for them according to something called the Pitcairn diet. It involved making large batches of food and then freezing portions. I would always put zucchini in, and our boy Blade would stand next to me the whole time I was assembling the meals and mooch as much raw zucchini as he could get. That might be a good thing for Cosmo if he likes it. We're getting to the time of year when zucchini is super plentiful and very inexpensive--and it's as low-cal as you can get.

nm

I think what you're calling garlic scallions might be the same as what we call garlic scapes. Are they curly and tapered? They're the tender stems of hard-neck garlic--I don't know if that grows in other parts of the country. I've been making the most delicious pesto from them for years. Lucky you if you can use yours for that. They won't be in the market here for another month, but I always look forward to them.

I dozed off at some point. Was the suggestion that she was leaving the marriage to be with Starbucks guy? That seemed very unlikely to me for various reasons. She might have been pregnant in the early interviews, since they took place years ago. But her blusher looked radioactive. Don't they have a makeup artist on Dateline?

This is correct. I worked on several books written by one of his coauthors after the coauthor went solo. To Patterson's credit, though, this is hardly a secret, and he does a staggering amount of charitable work on behalf of libraries, independent bookstores, kids in underserved areas, and young writers. So I'm good with whatever he's come up with that works for him.

A few weeks ago, my husband passed along this quote to me, and I've stickied it onto my desktop: I have never faced a problem that could not be solved with an appropriate amount of explosives. --Chuck “Boom Boom” Vessels I think you should purchase an appropriate amount of explosives.

I'm deeply offended at having my refrigerator referred to as a "dump tank." (A) I use them before 15 days. (B) Here I am, after doing three batches of them, healthy as a horse. Or maybe a burro. But if you're concerned, don't try it.