Anything You Can Cook I Can Cook Better

Lovin' the shots of Chicago, makes me so happy.

Pizzaria Uno's! I want pizza... Enter Colicchio and Padma. Is Colicchio on a box?

Elimination Challenge Time!

Me: Joe, peaches, fennel sausage, thoughts?
Joe: Oh that's a great combination!

Sure enough Rocco was dubious and the peaches prevail. Yet again solidifying my opinion that Rocco is a giant beotch. Go defrost some Bertolli and leave us alone! Or at least take off your shirt.

Flash to Nimma saying she's not going to socialize with the other chefs. We've all heard this before, and it doesn't give you any sort of advantage. Yet, I can't say it gives you a disadvantage either, unless you count being held down by two of your teammates and being threatened that they'll shave your head a disadvantage.

Joe: Oh that girl's gone!

Back to the kitchen.

Me: Joe, what's the deal with the souflee?
Joe: A good souflee uses egg whites that are beaten into stiff peaks and then you carefully put it into a dish and then into an oven of the right temperature. It's supposed to rise up out the dish like a chef's hat.
Me: ermmm...
Joe: They showed perfect ones on Ratatouille.
Me: OOOOooooh!

Me: Joe, shrimp marinated in parsley? That's weird to me.
Joe: No, that's the classic recipe, loads of butter, parsley, maybe topped with a lemon wedge.

Me: Stephanie's like, YES Bourdain loves my duck, please come live with me so I can feed it to you and you can tell me how great I am over and over again.

Richard has effing smoke come out of his dish. All I can say is thank God there is none of that stupid foam Marcel was so fond of in the past seasons. Let's see some new gastro-nomical creations and you do not have to use the FREAKIN' FOAM! Liquid nitrogen pleeeeeeeeease! I have had food made with lasers and liquid nitrogen, and trust me, it was delicioso, and that's the whole point right?

Joe: Here's my big idea: Fast food, slow food. You have two animals go head to head, one eats the other and then you eat them both. Round 1 - Cheetah vs. Turtle.
Me: You're pretty.

Chef's Table

Hey, I seemed to have misplaced my douche, has anyone seen - "Guest chef Rocco DiSpirito" never mind! Never mind everybody! False alarm.

Bourdain, "Loved your dish, great flavor, great composition, great color, great texture, loved it!" Stephanie's like, one more time! Pleeeeease!

Stephanie wins!! YEA CHI TOWN!! I highly suspect that Bourdain held down DiSpirito and threatened to mushroom stamp him if he didn't give the win to Stephanie. At least, that's how I envision it...

Ok, why didn't Stephanie get a special prize?? Joe says she should get - never mind, you don't want to know. He's dirty. He's spending too much time with dirty boys.

Colicchio, "A milanese is breaded in bread crumbs, there is a difference between the two. And it was just the coating of bread crumbs was way too thick. Way too thick."

Joe: OWNED!

Rocco, "Let's just say it wasn't just his gnocchi that was dense." Taking notes at the chef's table... note to self: gnocchi is tough... dense... please God have this guy say something stupid so I can use my line about the gnocchi, man that would be so badass. I gotta get more quips than Bourdain this season.

Little plug here, the best gnocchi I have ever had was cooked by Tony from The Filthy Libertine. Just throwing it out there... mmmmm little pillows of heaven.

End of episode one. Let's revisit the past for a moment. Season 1 winner of the first round: Harold. We all know how that ended. Season 2: Ilan, again season winner, although he was not my favorite and his drama with Marcel made me threaten not to watch season 3, and the only reason I did was because a chef from Chicago was on it. Season 3: Trey. Many argue he could've gone all the way. He did go far, but flopped in one of the last challenges. I think the point here is, if you stick out in the first round, when the group of badass chefs is at the all time high for the entire ordeal, you're going to stand out for the rest of the challenges. I hope Stephanie continues to be a head above the rest!

You all should know Joe's been cooking soup this entire time with his own stock made from scratch. He first put all his ingredients in their own little separated bowls. Now, if only I could find him a cheetah and a turtle...

Fingerless mittens or fingerless gloves? I think I like mittens. Cuz it rhymes with kittens. tee hee Kittens with mittens, mittens with kittens.

I've been doing some major work on my fingerless mittens from Miss Eunny. Please please please open that link in a new window because if you don't I know you'll never return to this entry. I have currently ripped out and started over the color work on these twice now. sigh. It's okay though, they look loads better now than they did when I started. First I tried having brown as the background with pink as the design, but there just wasn't enough pink! If you look closely, the pink actually changes colors slightly going lighter and darker and I really wanted to show that off. Because it's purty dang it! You should be very proud that this yarn is not any sort of shade of blue or turquoise. It seems anything and everything I could make, I automatically go for the turquoise, and it's usually the same shade that I'm wearing at the time. So I went for a color I don't normally wear this time to mix it up.

I'm surprised I still have the motivation to do a second mitten after all that ripping, but so far things are looking good because I've been imagining wearing these to Paul's Rock Band Party Part Deaux!! YES!! ::insert devil horn hand signals here::

I heart Rock Band. On Guitar Hero my character's name is PHOENIXX (yes all caps please), and Kate and I made our band name Mind Moose on Rock Band. I imagine that when we take the stage the announcer from the movie Spiderman goes, "MIIIIIIIIIIIND MOOOOOSE!" with his voice going up an octave and then down again like a verbal roller coaster. Because that's what are show is like fool - an effing roller coaster YEAAAAA! Ideally speaking I would wear a leather bikini top with a sequin mini skirt in order to show off my PHOENIXX belly tattoo to Paul's par-tah, but sadly I'll have to settle for my new Foo Fighters t-shirt and fingerless mittens. I would wear my new beret, but berets aren't punk enough, sorry.

You wanna rock with 'dis?!

I haven't worn a beret since I was about six years old and had a bowl hair cut. I was the hottest thing in two mary janes, I'll tell you what. Those holes are supposed to be there, I promise. I wore it to work today and noticed that it is exactly the same color as the shirt I'm wearing. I'm cursed I tell you. I swear I don't do these things intentionally. The pattern is from Twinkle's Weekend Knits. I added one more row of increases, but next time I think I'll do two to make it extra-slouchy. This one was a pain to do on double pointed needles, my stitches kept falling off! And then there was the part where I kinda skipped four rows of pattern, cuz I'm cool like that.

Twinkle's book had me a wee bit disappointed. I have her first one and there are a ton of sweaters in there that I drool over. There's maybe one in Weekend Knits I would actually make. There's a throw that is pretty too, but easy to figure out without having to pay for the whole book. Then, there's a scarf that is scarily reminiscent of the one I made for my dad with crochet?! ::Looks over right shoulder, looks over left shoulder:: What's going on here?

Besides being obviously stalked by knitters because I'm sooo pop.u.lar., I've been stocking up on yarn and knitting supplies. I'm currently not allowed to buy any more. You know, unless I really need it, like really really need it, or it's super cute, or it's right in front of me and I can't just LEAVE it there! Can you just LEAVE it there??