Masterchef (US) - General Discussion

[AZChristian]

Found this online.  Apparently she's a "TV personality."  Right up there as "influencer" as a new goal for a millennial career choice.

[tinkerbell]

9 hours ago, AZChristian said:

Found this online.  Apparently she's a "TV personality."  Right up there as "influencer" as a new goal for a millennial career choice.

Makes sense. So it was a performance,  and she was never being seriously considered as a contestant. This show comes across as very contrived, nothing seems genuine.

[GHScorpiosRule]

10 minutes ago, tinkerbell said:

This show comes across as very contrived, nothing seems genuine.

The only thing that is genuine is when we get to see Gordon cooking or giving advice. That's why I keep watching.

[DEL901]

2 hours ago, tinkerbell said:

Makes sense. So it was a performance,  and she was never being seriously considered as a contestant. This show comes across as very contrived, nothing seems genuine.

Who has ever made it big in tv from this show?   Claudia has judged on Chopped, appeared as a guest judge on one of the baking shows and was invited to the qualifying round for Tournament of Champions but didnt get past the first round.  I think Eddie Jackson was a contestant.   He didn’t make it far on MC, but he has a nice career going on the Food Network.  

[Mahamid Frauded Me]

14 hours ago, AZChristian said:

Found this online.  Apparently she's a "TV personality."  Right up there as "influencer" as a new goal for a millennial career choice.

Her family had a show on a while back about her nail salon, she was quite good at nail art. The grandma I see still has the same Dynasty hair and the mom needs a good cut. I guess she is trying for a comeback or something

Edited May 31 by Mahamid Frauded Me

[threebluestars]

12 hours ago, DEL901 said:

Who has ever made it big in tv from this show?   Claudia has judged on Chopped, appeared as a guest judge on one of the baking shows and was invited to the qualifying round for Tournament of Champions but didnt get past the first round.  I think Eddie Jackson was a contestant.   He didn’t make it far on MC, but he has a nice career going on the Food Network.  

Christine Ha has been really successful. Her cookbook was a NY Times bestseller and she was a James Beard nominee twice (2022 as a finalist and 2023 as a semi-finalist) for Best Chef Texas. She judged on Top Chef a little awhile ago too.

 

[DEL901]

6 hours ago, threebluestars said:

Christine Ha has been really successful. Her cookbook was a NY Times bestseller and she was a James Beard nominee twice (2022 as a finalist and 2023 as a semi-finalist) for Best Chef Texas. She judged on Top Chef a little awhile ago too.

 

Thx.  Good for her.     She was before I started watching.   But still, in 23 seasons, that’s not a good batting average.  

People who think they can use reality tv as a launching pad to success need to realize that it isn’t what it once was. 

[SG429]

The quasi-team formats GR is leaning into now are pretty tiresome. We already know that one from each team will be in the final, and it should quickly become apparent who the weak links are on each.

While I'm here, enough with the time-suck "auditions". And it's not fair to the cooks or us that they don't critique all the dishes, even if the Official Line is that they taste everything. A rule of TV is that if it's not on camera it didn't happen.

Edited June 1 by SG429

[potatoradio]

Uh, show? You have Gordon Ramsay. You don't need these half baked "theme" ideas to ramp up our interest. I will watch Ramsay in just about anything. I've eaten in Aaron's Johnny Sanchez restaurant (very, very good) and Joe has Lidia Bastianich for a mother, so I'm tuning in and  I'm sold on just a plain old cooking competition, k? 

And this theme is even dumber than the "regions" theme from last season. I mean, even if the generations are so drastically different from each other, isn't everyone going to try to put up a "modern twist" on their dishes? Boomers may be older, but that doesn't mean stupid and that doesn't mean they're going to produce creamed peas and meatloaf because it's their generation. 

It is kind of interesting to think about maybe one challenge around each generation's food trends. Meat and two sides or casseroles from the 60s/70s. The beginning of a "healthy" eating craze (read: drink Diet Coke and eat McDonald's new salads) in the 80s,  vegetarianism/organic  in the 90s/00s, veganism/Paleo in the 10s. I mean, I'm generalizing like crazy, but I think a single challenge might have been fun. An entire show of annoying people screaming cliched sayings from their generation? Nah. 

Though there could be a drinking game to be had. Every time somebody screws up/mixes up their generation's "lingo," take a drink. Fer shur totally tubular gnarly dude that's a groovy ris AF dish far out. 

And there you go. You're drunk and this show is much better. 

 

 

 

[oliviabenson]

Lexi looks 45, and I’m not sure why she cooked that dish. It looked awful. 

[Yeah No]

Here we go again with the fake auditioners and judging gimmicks.  How could they be so stupid as to think their audience doesn't see through it by now?  From the moment the camera focused on Lexi I knew she was a plant put there for entertainment value only.  And even as "entertainment" it failed because it insulted the audience's intelligence.  If they want the audience to think this show is really about finding great home cooks it can't be making us think the whole thing is fake.

I think they were trying to throw us off by having Aron be the "asshole" that says "no" more often than Joe.  But again it failed because it's just so obviously fake and done just to create some sort of "suspense".  Oh puhleeze, forget about "generations", they must think the average emotional age of their audience is about 5 years old.  

And now I'm dreading the inevitable insults to every generation, especially the Boomers, with Gordon, who missed the Boomer generation by maybe a year or two himself saying "old man", "turn up your hearing aid" and worse.  And what kind of idiots fitting that stereotype will they find to represent that generation just to "justify" those insults?  Come on, are they that tone deaf to their audience to realize that half the people that watch are probably Boomers and won't appreciate that crap?

At least the judges called out the salmon croquettes as not particularly "Millennial".  I was probably eating them the year Gordon himself was born.  If it was presented as a new twist on an old favorite maybe it would be believable but come on.  It's just as lame as last year trying to make us think certain dishes represented certain regions of the country when it was obvious that they did not.

Every season I think the show is jumping the shark and yet it keeps coming back with this kind of drivel.  The sob stories are another obvious ploy for sympathy they think we all love.  How two decades ago!  Even Food Network dropped that stupidity!  Just stop capitalizing on people's personal tragedies!  None of this crap is entertaining!  A real competition without gimmicks is much more entertaining than this garbage!

LOL, I say all that and yet I still tune in every year....🙄

[Colorado David]

I do like they bring on new guest judges and not the same tired ones from previous seasons (rhymes with Snoz and Posey).  I like seeing a variety of different cultures and interpretations. 

Ya Joe rocking the earring! I think that is new, I don't recall seeing it before. 

And agreed, the initial tryouts are always the tv star wannabees mixed in with legit amateur chefs. I give it 2-3 episodes to weed out the posers, and get down to more legit talent. 

And this age breakdown thing...really? Seems a kinda trite way to categorize people. I've known old souls who were in the their 20s and people in their 60s utterly full of fun-loving attitudes.  I prefered it when it was more a regional breakdown. But lets see where this goes. I am guessing the millenials are more likely to have meltdowns, as they seem to not handle criticism tooooo well. JMO.

[tinkerbell]

The Japanese guy is 59, which, strictly speaking makes him Gen X, not a baby boomer.  

I know there isn't really a difference between 59 and 60, but the show is all about defining people by these categories,  they could at least be consistent.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I wanted to see tonight because of Joe’s mom as guest judge. Instead, the whole show minus the last minute was preempted by the local weather folks. Apparently there was a tornado warning and a small one 10 miles north of me. Though I didn’t hear or see any twister or howling winds. Like, they couldn’t just report what was happening in a crawl at the bottom of the screen?

Guess I’ll catch this on Hulu tomorrow.

[mertensia]

1 hour ago, tinkerbell said:

The Japanese guy is 59, which, strictly speaking makes him Gen X, not a baby boomer.  

I know there isn't really a difference between 59 and 60, but the show is all about defining people by these categories,  they could at least be consistent.

If he turns 60 by midnight of 12/31/2024 he's a Boomer.

Auditions are boring.

[Yeah No]

6 hours ago, tinkerbell said:

The Japanese guy is 59, which, strictly speaking makes him Gen X, not a baby boomer.  

I know there isn't really a difference between 59 and 60, but the show is all about defining people by these categories,  they could at least be consistent.

Agreed, especially when you consider that these shows are filmed at least months if not a year in advance.  Was it so hard to find actual Baby Boomers?  And why was there only one woman out of all of them?  There was a brief clip of a woman who looked like she was at a stove and ready to audition but the show never followed up on her.  WTF?  I thought we would at least see her cook and get judged but no.  Even the people they turned down were men!

Also, while Lidia Bastianich is technically a Baby Boomer I have never seen her as part of my generation even though I'm a Boomer myself born in 1958.  I have never identified with anyone born in the 1940s at all.  I agree with some writers that the generation was not defined well in terms of grouping people by values and outlook.  It only lumped us together in terms of being born in the post-war boom.  But was 1958 really part of that initial boom?  I consider myself part of "Generation Jones".  I'm more sympatico with people who were not a part of the "Woodstock Generation", war protest/hippie generation but were too young for that.  I am part of the "Brady Bunch" generation.

That said, I do love Lidia and was loving how she was razzing on Joe, calling him her little monster (OK I think Gordon said monster, but still).  And the way she teased Aron too.  Speaking of him his attempting the push ups was all kinds of cringe!

Edited June 6 by Yeah No

[GHScorpiosRule]

I couldn't figure out where to put this, but here is as good a place as any and @seacliffsal will also appreciate it!

 

I'm totally going to try Gordon's way of scrambled! Never done it that way before!

[eel2178]

On 6/5/2024 at 8:08 PM, tinkerbell said:

The Japanese guy is 59, which, strictly speaking makes him Gen X, not a baby boomer.  

Exactly. Just because your father was a soldier in the Viet Nam War and knocked up some random woman while on leave in Japan (which they quietly glossed over) does not make you a Baby Boomer. The baby boom had ended by the time the War started.

He is obviously there for his sob story, not his cooking abilities. He can go home first.

Then, we have the personal trainer who claims to be obsessed with nutrition and didn't serve brown rice or enough mango or spinach to be the full serving size under dietary standards. He can go home second.

My pet peeve with any "fine dining" is the fruit/vegetable servings are always too small. If I'm being served peas, I want enough to meet the RDA, not have a tablespoon of puree decorating my plate.

Edited June 7 by eel2178

[mlp]

11 hours ago, Yeah No said:

Speaking of him his attempting the push ups was all kinds of cringe!

That whole push up bit was ridiculous.  I didn't see them stop the clock so the guy wouldn't lose cooking time.  I also didn't see the guy wash his hands after he got up off the foor and resumed handling raw food.  We know Gordon is very fit for his age.  Demonstrating that in the middle of a contestant's timed cook was just theatrics.

[Colorado David]

42 minutes ago, mlp said:

That whole push up bit was ridiculous.  I didn't see them stop the clock so the guy wouldn't lose cooking time.  I also didn't see the guy wash his hands after he got up off the foor and resumed handling raw food.  We know Gordon is very fit for his age.  Demonstrating that in the middle of a contestant's timed cook was just theatrics.

agreed, that was just dopey. i don't mind the antics on MC Junior as that appeals to the kid audience, but I dont need to see the adults doing stunts or acts. Save that for HK.

Is it me or is there always at least one sob story each season? It's become a trope. Can yall tell me the other tropes you see?

[eel2178]

1 hour ago, Colorado David said:

Is it me or is there always at least one sob story each season? It's become a trope.

One? We're only 2 episodes in, and I've already lost track of how many I Was A Poor Immigrant stories we've heard.

[Colorado David]

maybe just me, but i dont count that particular backstory as a trope. i see that more as a producers like to bring in multi cultural contestants. for wider audience appeal.

[seacliffsal]

17 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I couldn't figure out where to put this, but here is as good a place as any and @seacliffsal will also appreciate it!

 

I'm totally going to try Gordon's way of scrambled! Never done it that way before!

As always, you know me so well!!!😄

There were several 'background' cooks we never really saw-there was one woman with dark hair, one guy in an orange shirt wearing a hat, etc.  I really liked the man with blue frame glasses who they let go (he seemed genuinely nice in his background shots).  Oh well.  Really disliked the comments about 'plating like a boomer' and other attempts to stereotype an entire generation.  I guess this is what we're in for this season.  Second episode and it's already tiresome.

The inconsistency in the judging is really obvious.  Sometimes underseasoning is okay and other times it's not.  However, in spite of my criticisms, it's a Gordon Ramsey show so, obviously, I'm in for the season!  

By, the way, I just made a reservation for his River Restaurant in the Savoy Hotel for July 26th.  I can hardly wait!  And, yes, I do plan on ordering the Beef Wellington and Sticky Toffee Pudding (talk about 'heritage' cooking...).

[bankerchick]

On 6/6/2024 at 3:59 AM, Yeah No said:

Also, while Lidia Bastianich is technically a Baby Boomer I have never seen her as part of my generation even though I'm a Boomer myself born in 1958.  I have never identified with anyone born in the 1940s at all.  I agree with some writers that the generation was not defined well in terms of grouping people by values and outlook.  It only lumped us together in terms of being born in the post-war boom.  But was 1958 really part of that initial boom?  I consider myself part of "Generation Jones".  I'm more sympatico with people who were not a part of the "Woodstock Generation", war protest/hippie generation but were too young for that.  I am part of the "Brady Bunch" generation.

I was also born in 1958 and agree with every word of this.  I feel more like a Gen X than a boomer (I don't know what 'Generation Jones' is?)

[Yeah No]

10 hours ago, bankerchick said:

I was also born in 1958 and agree with every word of this.  I feel more like a Gen X than a boomer (I don't know what 'Generation Jones' is?)

Generation Jones was a phrase coined by a writer who felt the same way and postulated another generation in between Boomers and Gen X.  It roughly starts at 1955 and ends in 1965, so it's basically the tail end of the current Baby Boom birth years.

One of my favorite articles on the subject is this one:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/meet-generation-jones-born-19551965-who-what-want-how-theresa-danna/

I often tell people that if they're the ages of any of the Brady Bunch kids/actors they would be considered part of Generation Jones.

On 6/6/2024 at 3:17 PM, eel2178 said:

Exactly. Just because your father was a soldier in the Viet Nam War and knocked up some random woman while on leave in Japan (which they quietly glossed over) does not make you a Baby Boomer. The baby boom had ended by the time the War started.

I think they're confused, LOL.  Many people old enough to have served in Vietnam are Baby Boomers themselves.  The people old enough to give birth to Baby Boomers would be either from the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation.  The Baby Boom is about the post WWII surge in births, not the Vietnam war. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

Well I know I can skip next week. Don’t need to hear the smug bragging. Why do these young’ns have to be so damned smug?

I may tune in to Generation X-which I belong to.

I loved Lidia, but should have just skipped this. I’m hoping Gordon will do a cooking demo and have the contestants watch and follow him so their dishes look like his. Hey, if kids have to do it, why not adults? Plus, I get to see Gordon cook, which is the only reason I continue to watch!

[Yeah No]

12 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Well I know I can skip next week. Don’t need to hear the smug bragging. Why do these young’ns have to be so damned smug?

Exactly!  Smug is a great word for it.  If we were that way we'd have gotten shut down and put in our place by our elders in a hot minute.  I don't know why it's tolerated today.  Maybe Gordon will go back to his mean ways and start ragging on them.  Not that I want to see that either.  The show should stop with the gimmicks and concentrate on the food. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 minute ago, Yeah No said:

Exactly!  Smug is a great word for it.  If we were that way we'd have gotten shut down and put in our place by our elders in a hot minute.  I don't know why it's tolerated today.  Maybe Gordon will go back to his mean ways and start ragging on them.  Not that I want to see that either.  The show should stop with the gimmicks and concentrate on the food. 

From what I saw in the previews, they act as if they created how to cook. Like their parents and people before them hadn’t heard of the concept or also knew how to cook.

If Gordon could shut down the smug of Remy in the junior show this season, I expect him to do the same on this show. 

[Yeah No]

9 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

From what I saw in the previews, they act as if they created how to cook. Like their parents and people before them hadn’t heard of the concept or also knew how to cook.

If Gordon could shut down the smug of Remy in the junior show this season, I expect him to do the same on this show. 

Cool, at least there's hope he'll say something.  I don't watch MC Junior anymore.  I guess I got tired of it.  I started to wonder if any of it was for real at all.

I know, the young'ns put forward dishes like they think they invented them when I was eating them decades before they were born.  And no one calls them on it?  Parents and other older people never missed an opportunity to set us straight on that so we learned not to do it.

And I hate it that the judges look at the way a dish is presented and act like it's so novel and fresh when it looks like everything else you see these days and the food itself is nothing new or innovative either.

I find most of the stuff the young'n's come up with are nothing but new varieties of old concepts.  Like a new flavor of chicken wing coated in corn flakes or something.  Big whoop.  Like today we have 95,000 new flavors of Cheerios on the shelves.  Big deal.  Nobody invents anything new but they all want credit for inventing something ground breaking when all they did was make a new flavor of an old thing.

[fishcakes]

5 hours ago, Yeah No said:

Generation Jones was a phrase coined by a writer who felt the same way and postulated another generation in between Boomers and Gen X.  It roughly starts at 1955 and ends in 1965, so it's basically the tail end of the current Baby Boom birth years.

The term Generation X started this way too. When Douglas Coupland published his novel (1991, I think) (also there's a non-fiction book that came out around the same time written by Geoffrey Holtz), he said that Gen X were not a full generation; the term was meant to designate those Baby Boomers who were born between the late '50s and mid- '60s because he and other social commentators felt that we differed from other Baby Boomers in significantly different ways, primarily economic, but also we seemed more -- how can I put this? -- pessimistic and less ambitious. I even recall that at that time, people born in 1965 or later were called Generation Y (the term Millennial hadn't come into use), but those original Gen Y's kept referring to themselves as Gen X, so eventually they got folded in. Eventually, Gen X came to be roughly 1965 - 1980, Gen Y became Millennial, and the original Gen X (or as I think of it, the only true Gen Xers) went back to being considered Baby Boomers. I think this is how Generation Jones came into use; since Gen Y had coopted the Gen X term, Gen Jones was used to designate what was originally Gen X. Coupland (born in 1961) in more recent interviews goes along with the newer designations, but I can't help but think in his heart of hearts, he's a little pissed off.

39 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

From what I saw in the previews, they act as if they created how to cook. Like their parents and people before them hadn’t heard of the concept or also knew how to cook.

I think all the generations are going to do this throughout the auditions, and I can only hope everyone will tone it down as the season progresses. The Boomers were doing that this week too. Lydia said something about how they were the basis of all cooking, and one of the cheftestants said a similar thing. Like, sure, there was no cooking before Boomers got old enough to invent the stove. Before that it was all raw meat and standing in a field eating grains right off the stalk.

[Yeah No]

28 minutes ago, fishcakes said:

The term Generation X started this way too. When Douglas Coupland published his novel (1991, I think) (also there's a non-fiction book that came out around the same time written by Geoffrey Holtz), he said that Gen X were not a full generation; the term was meant to designate those Baby Boomers who were born between the late '50s and mid- '60s because he and other social commentators felt that we differed from other Baby Boomers in significantly different ways, primarily economic, but also we seemed more -- how can I put this? -- pessimistic and less ambitious. I even recall that at that time, people born in 1965 or later were called Generation Y (the term Millennial hadn't come into use), but those original Gen Y's kept referring to themselves as Gen X, so eventually they got folded in. Eventually, Gen X came to be roughly 1965 - 1980, Gen Y became Millennial, and the original Gen X (or as I think of it, the only true Gen Xers) went back to being considered Baby Boomers. I think this is how Generation Jones came into use; since Gen Y had coopted the Gen X term, Gen Jones was used to designate what was originally Gen X. Coupland (born in 1961) in more recent interviews goes along with the newer designations, but I can't help but think in his heart of hearts, he's a little pissed off.

That's an interesting take, I have always read that Gen Y was the original term for Millennials but the term Millennial took over as the more common one so Gen Y fizzled out.  Supposedly that's why Gen Z was named Gen Z because it came after Gen Y. 

I would have rather been considered part of Gen X like Copeland originally intended it.  My parents were forward thinking/acting for their ages and I grew up as a latch-key kid because unlike a lot of kids my age my mom went back to work full time when I was 9.  So I relate to a lot of the Gen X characteristics more than the Boomer ones.

[fishcakes]

22 minutes ago, Yeah No said:

That's an interesting take, I have always read that Gen Y was the original term for Millennials but the term Millennial took over as the more common one so Gen Y fizzled out. 

Gen Y was the original term for what's now considered Gen X. I remember at the time people in that generation (so slightly younger than me) saying it sounded dumb, whereas they thought Gen X sounded much cooler, which is why, I assume, they took it. And real Gen Xers, being as apathetic as we are, were like, yeah, whatever, no one cares about this. Then Gen Y did become the original term for Millennials, and I guess they didn't like it either, heh. Honestly though I find the subsequent Y - Z - Alpha naming scheme so lazy. It's like when Survivor got to the season after Winners at War and then said, "eh, let's just call this next season 41."

Edited June 8 by fishcakes

[GHScorpiosRule]

4 hours ago, Yeah No said:

4 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Cool, at least there's hope he'll say something.  I don't watch MC Junior anymore.  I guess I got tired of it

Yes he did. She tried “correcting” him in a smart aleck way on how to pronounce shallots, and he shut her down quick, which shut her smug mouth for that challenge. It was glorious.

[eel2178]

17 hours ago, Yeah No said:

The people old enough to give birth to Baby Boomers would be either from the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation. 

It is possible for a Baby Boomer to give birth to a Baby Boomer, although by that time it wasn't considered socially acceptable.

Born the first year of the Boom, 1945, if you had produced a child by the time you were 16, that child would also be a Boomer.

My cutoff for the end of the Baby Boomers is 1963 when birth control pills went on the market in the US. It was hugely evident in the school system I went through. I was born the end of 1961, so literally anyone born a year later than me was Gen X.

My year in first grade required 3 classrooms of 30 students each. The following year, the same school could barely fill 2 rooms of first graders. It was like that my entire time in elementary school. At the end of every school year, teachers got reshuffled and changed grades to accommodate fewer students.

[eel2178]

On 6/7/2024 at 5:17 PM, bankerchick said:

I was also born in 1958 and agree with every word of this.  I feel more like a Gen X than a boomer.

I was the last of the Baby Boomers (born Thanksgiving 1961, and my brother (born June 1970) was firmly Gen X. I could see huge changes in the way children who were born to Depression Era parents (mine) and those born to Baby Boomer parents (most of my brother's contemporaries) were being raised.

My brother and I went through the same school systems 8 years apart. When I went to Sunday School, we ate breakfast before we went at 9AM and ate lunch after we got home at 12PM. When my brother went to Sunday School, they had to take turns bringing in snacks for the class every week because it was no longer possible for them to survive sitting in class for 3hours without some kind of sustenance. 

In public school, I went to kindergarten 2 afternoons a week, and it was all more about socialization than academics. Reading wasn't taught until first grade (although there were 6 of us in my first grade class who already knew how to read, so we had our own reading group separate from those who either didn't even know the alphabet yet or those who could recognize the letters but didn't know how they sounded or made words). My brother went to kindergarten 5 afternoons a week and was taught how to read which was a requirement before you could move on to first grade.

My list of examples could go on and on indefinitely. The values of society made real changes based on what generation your parents had come from. I think that still continues today. (Participation Trophies, anyone?)

[Yeah No]

1 hour ago, eel2178 said:

It is possible for a Baby Boomer to give birth to a Baby Boomer, although by that time it wasn't considered socially acceptable.

Born the first year of the Boom, 1945, if you had produced a child by the time you were 16, that child would also be a Boomer.

My cutoff for the end of the Baby Boomers is 1963 when birth control pills went on the market in the US. It was hugely evident in the school system I went through. I was born the end of 1961, so literally anyone born a year later than me was Gen X.

Every site I've looked at including Wikipedia lists the first year of the Baby Boom as 1946, not 45.  The war didn't officially end until 1945 and this was a post war boom.  But yeah, technically someone born in 1946 could totally have a child that was born by 1965 which is the year pretty much universally claimed on websites as the last birth year of the Baby Boom and they wouldn't have had to be as young as 16 to accomplish it.  The issue discussed here was whether the man on this show could have been a Baby Boomer and fathered a Baby Boomer.  If he was in the military I would assume he'd have to be at least 18 when he fathered the child, and that would mean he'd have to have been born in 1946, so doing the math he would have had to father the child in 1964 or 1965 for it to also be a Baby Boomer.  According to his bios I'm seeing his son's birth year listed as 1965 so that's cutting it awfully close!

One of my best friends was born in '62 and he would fight to defend his status as a late Boomer like me.  Perhaps we are our own animal like Gen. Jones states or really should be part of Gen X but whatever we are I am sure we are both it and no website I've looked at seems to disagree that '58 and '62 should belong in the same generation.  

 

44 minutes ago, eel2178 said:

I was the last of the Baby Boomers (born Thanksgiving 1961, and my brother (born June 1970) was firmly Gen X. I could see huge changes in the way children who were born to Depression Era parents (mine) and those born to Baby Boomer parents (most of my brother's contemporaries) were being raised.

You're the last of the Baby Boomers according to you but AFAICT not anyone else unless you follow the Gen. Jones idea or some other published theory, which would put you in another category altogether, not Gen X.  Just clarifying.  Also the Depression era kids were split between the Greatest and the Silent generations and many later era Boomers and earlier Gen Xers were born to Silent Generation parents.

Edited June 9 by Yeah No

[dmeets]

Joe’s insistence that peppers should be skinless, and therefore slimy, has greatly reduced my desire to eat at one of his restaurants.

[Anduril]

I was born in February 1981 which would make me part of the oldest millennials. But I think my generation can be divided up as well. I didn’t have internet access until I was 15-16. I don’t have anything in common with someone who has always had it growing up. They don’t remember what life was like before widespread internet access was a thing. 
 

As far as this show, it’s pretty predictable which makes it not as fun. But this is just something to have on to kill time. 

[Yeah No]

1 hour ago, Anduril said:

I was born in February 1981 which would make me part of the oldest millennials. But I think my generation can be divided up as well. I didn’t have internet access until I was 15-16. I don’t have anything in common with someone who has always had it growing up. They don’t remember what life was like before widespread internet access was a thing. 
 

As far as this show, it’s pretty predictable which makes it not as fun. But this is just something to have on to kill time. 

True, I agree with you.  My nephews were born in 1981 and 1983 and the older they get the more they say the same thing.  They are also more into some of the retro things like vinyl records, film cameras and stereo receivers that younger Millennials and Gen Z don't even remember.

[fishcakes]

3 hours ago, Anduril said:

I was born in February 1981 which would make me part of the oldest millennials. But I think my generation can be divided up as well. I didn’t have internet access until I was 15-16. I don’t have anything in common with someone who has always had it growing up.

This is a good example of how the generational stereotypes are meaningless. I was born in the early '60s, making me a late Boomer/original Xer, and I've been on the internet since the late 1980s because I worked at a university, and colleges/government had internet earlier than businesses and the general public. Granted it was mostly green screen and text back then and images were usually just ASCII code, but we managed to evolve as the net did. So I'm alternately amused/irritated when younger people act like Baby Boomers don't know how to turn on their computers because I'm thinking, "well, we invented the internet, but please do continue." Recently, a millennial youthsplained to me how instagram carousel posts work as if I don't get IG here in the nursing home or cemetery or wherever it is she imagines I live.

14 hours ago, dmeets said:

Joe’s insistence that peppers should be skinless, and therefore slimy, has greatly reduced my desire to eat at one of his restaurants.

Haha, even Lydia was taking pains to distance herself from him and his nonsense. He's always making declarations about the "right" way to do things and they always sound absurd, so my guess is he's not much of a cook himself. I vaguely remember he did a demonstration once on the show with Lydia leading him through it. He's said that although he's not a professional chef he could beat Gordon in a cooking competition, and I would very much like to see him try that. Gordon would be plating up his entire meal while Joe was still peeling peppers.

Edited June 10 by fishcakes

[Colorado David]

i watch tons of cooking shows, and skinning the peppers is NOT something I've ever heard of. a lot of flavor and texture comes from the skins, esp if you roast them.

see all this talk on the generations, this is why i hate that as a show concept. there are always tons of exceptions to the generation rule, and IMO by segregating by generation, you are just creating cooking stereotypes. I totally luv when a youngster tackles a recipe their grandparents made - one i think it denotes a level of respect on the taste, and two it indicates how hard those recipes must've been way back before all the culinary innovations/devices we have now.

[Yeah No]

On 6/10/2024 at 10:26 AM, fishcakes said:

This is a good example of how the generational stereotypes are meaningless. I was born in the early '60s, making me a late Boomer/original Xer, and I've been on the internet since the late 1980s because I worked at a university, and colleges/government had internet earlier than businesses and the general public. Granted it was mostly green screen and text back then and images were usually just ASCII code, but we managed to evolve as the net did. So I'm alternately amused/irritated when younger people act like Baby Boomers don't know how to turn on their computers because I'm thinking, "well, we invented the internet, but please do continue." Recently, a millennial youthsplained to me how instagram carousel posts work as if I don't get IG here in the nursing home or cemetery or wherever it is she imagines I live.

You sound just like me, I say all this all the time.  I also worked at a university in the late '80s and had the internet earlier than most people, with email, even even real time chat.  And yes, we evolved with the internet and other programs.  I know how to do things the "old" way that younger people wouldn't know and it's saved my ass a few times.  Like when my non-touch screen computer decided not to respond to my mouse at all and I had to navigate myself out of it.  I get "youthsplained" too, BTW, I LOVE that phrase, I'm going to use it!

On 6/10/2024 at 2:12 PM, Colorado David said:

i watch tons of cooking shows, and skinning the peppers is NOT something I've ever heard of. a lot of flavor and texture comes from the skins, esp if you roast them.

Joe acts more fussy and old fashioned about food than my great grandparents who stepped off the boat from Sicily in 1904.  Skinning peppers is something old world Italians sometimes do when they fry them or after roasting them.  It was never a universal requirement, though!

[DEL901]

Does Aaron not know what Tempering Chocolate means?

[Tango64]

I’ll never understand why people audition for this show with a New York strip and fried potatoes. Even if they execute it well (and they often don’t), so what? Any mediocre home cook can do that. 

[mlp]

A professional cornhole player?  Seriously?  If that's what I did for a living, I don't think I'd admit it.  I didn't like anything about her including her voice and ripped jeans so I suppose she'll hang on for weeks.

I liked NIck on his season.  He came from an affluent family and had just been graduated from Harvard so I hope he's doing something a little more substantial with his life than being an internet personality.

Edited June 13 by mlp
Correct typo

[tinkerbell]

This emphasis on generations is so annoying. I've never met anyone who prefaces everything they say with "as a member of _____ generation." It just seems so contrived and fake. Oh, Gen Z'ers know how to look stuff up on their phones? I'm a boomer who does that all the time.

Gen Z made salmon and mashed potatoes, lava cake , lamb souvlaki, Chinese dumplings, a stir fry. Those are examples of Gen Z dishes? They seem pretty ordinary dishes that have been around forever.

Murt kept making negative comments about "old people." Arrogant brat.

[eel2178]

On 6/11/2024 at 10:14 PM, Yeah No said:

I know how to do things the "old" way that younger people wouldn't know and it's saved my ass a few times.

When the electricity goes out, call a Boomer, or someone who has lived with a Boomer. We'll survive longer than those who won't know how to do anything once the charge runs out on their cell phone batteries.

I remember after an episode of NCIS when all their technology had been confiscated, having to explain what a mimeograph machine was to all the young'ins on this forum.

[GHScorpiosRule]

12 hours ago, tinkerbell said:

Murt kept making negative comments about "old people." Arrogant brat.

I SO wanted him to get all four of the judges to say No! Arrogant is being kind; the way he trash talked everyone and talking about how "hot" he is. And then he burned the butter! Made me laugh. At least Gordon had the good sense to say no. I want him gone FAST. Along with Becka, the first one, who made that lava cake, and says she's 24, but looks like she's 16. Smug and arrogant twit. I want her gone as well. They need to eat some HUGE doses of Humble Pie.

[fishcakes]

This was a particularly obnoxious group of contestants. I'm sure not all Gen Zs are this heinous, so they're clearly casting specifically for the worst of the worst. The dude ranch guy was likeable and the doctor (I feel like I want to put that in scare quotes until I see some verification) was inoffensive, but rest of them would benefit from a good shaking. Shirtless pics guy was really bad, but I found Becca worse. Even before she said anything, I could tell from that smug look on her face that she would be hard to take, and she was.

13 hours ago, mlp said:

A professional cornhole player?  Seriously?  If that's what I did for a living, I don't think I'd admit it.  I didn't like anything about her including her voice and ripped jeans so I suppose she'll hang on for weeks.

I was trying to have sympathy for her based on her having to look at her husband's mullet. But then she used teriyaki sauce on lamb, so I want them both in jail.

12 hours ago, tinkerbell said:

Gen Z made salmon and mashed potatoes, lava cake , lamb souvlaki, Chinese dumplings, a stir fry. Those are examples of Gen Z dishes? They seem pretty ordinary dishes that have been around forever.

That's what I was thinking. It sounded like a menu from a chain restaurant where it's mostly steak and fries or burger and rings, but then they add a few dishes like jambalaya or fajitas, which they describe on the menu as "authentic."

[Madding crowd]

One of the obnoxious ones said he feels sorry for the boomer contestants because they won’t understand how to use the internet. First off, Masterchef has nothing to do with the  internet and secondly, if these people work, buy stuff, pay bills or do just about anything they know how to use the internet. It annoys me when young people think that if you don’t watch or make Tik Tok videos you don’t know the anything about the internet.