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Showing posts from January, 2009

Top Chef: 3 Steps To Predicting The Loser

DISCLAIMER: READING THIS BLOG POST MAY RUIN TOP CHEF FOR YOU FOREVER. IF YOU DON'T LIKE SAUSAGE, DON'T TOUR SAUSAGE FACTORIES. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I started to reliably predict who was going to be eliminated around season two of Top Chef. This isn't because I am a super genius, it's on top of me being a super genius. If you think about competition-based, reality television, each episode is a story with a winner and a loser. The winner and loser of an hour long television show are likely to get more airtime. When there is someone going home, it is in their best interest to make you as invested in that person as possible. This breaks down to three simple rules: The loser is the star of the episode. The star needs facetime early and often. The star of the show needs to have in-episode strife. Today's episode (Season 5, Episode 7) is a great example. While livetweeting (f'ing shoot me now, I livetweeted something), I called Gene and Melissa being elimina

What's grosser than gross?

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A: My Next Blog Post.

Altered Tastes: Unholy Mackerel

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It is really uncomfortable to admit my love for fishing. Even before I started my culinary love affair with fish, I have always enjoyed the simple pleasure of casting a line out into the water and waiting for something to happen. And waiting. and waiting. Most of my angling experiences were in a southern Vermont lake, teeming with perch, large and small mouth bass, and trout. In the ten years we went up there, I think we caught about three fish that the state would allow you to keep. In later years, I would occasionally get out on the ocean, mostly in New England and primarily blues and stripers. Just before new years I had the chance to go ocean fishing in the Florida Keys. According to our first mate, are likely to catch (in order of my personal preference): Blackfin Tuna, Grouper, Wahoo, Mackerel, King Mackerel, Sailfish, Barracuda. As luck would have it, we caught about 15 fish in three hours, which was mostly barracuda, king mackerel and 1.5 Mackerel. "One point five&