Ideally, no nutritionist or dietician will ever try to assert that two things that are correlational, that happen together, also just happen to be causal. That one caused the other.

There is some disagreement about all those saturated fats in coconut milk, but among the most responsible scientists it's not disagreement. It's uncertainty.

It's possible that a fat can be relatively healthy in one context, and accompanied by certain specific foods - and still be quite unhealthy in another context, another environment, in another diet. In the case of coconut milk, there's a suspicion that it's not the fat in the milk itself that's the issue - it's the total amount of that fat, and then the total amount and relative proportions of all the other types of fat in the diet. Complex. Uncertain.

But on the Internet, no one likes to be uncertain.

Will give a full review AFTER I watch my tape of Top Chef.
[/quote]
I haven't had my computer on for a week, tried to read all the pages, but just got lost in the munesia. Just thought I'd add some thought to what I did read.
Curry for children, my children at age 8 and 10 introduce me to Indian Curry Chicken after my ex took them to a restaurant. They loved it and still do to this day.
Steph has always been my pick to win, but she needs to get it together. The judges were kind.
Nutrional meal under $10.00. Turkey sausage stuffed with low fat mozzerla onions and green peppers wrapped in whole grain lasagna noodle smothered in Ragu vege speghetti sauce, sliced fruit mixed with yogurt. Cost in S.W. Ohio about $7.00.
WAJ, everything about this show seems fixed. But laugh shake your head and enjoy it anyway.
KK I generaly tip 15% if service is average. 20% if service is good and 25% if service is excellent. 10% on delivered food. Nothing if I pick up.
Buffet 10% cause I do most of the work. Just my input.
Question... I couldn't find the thread that compared Otto's sheinanigans (sp) with who?? I missed this.
I won't miss Mark, I wouldn't eat his food, based on his appearance (sloppy) Lisa, what and attitude, but I think she defended her dish well.Nikki needs a haircut and so does Richard. Speaking of Richard,(little blaizes)? Isn't he gay? I guess he could surrogate. That's the only way he could make blaizes. Wedding challenge, didn't they learn the 1st time? Sorry so long.

You mean when you go to McDonalds you tip?? In my little town, all the resteraunts have drive thru except Subways, and well, call me bad, but I don't tip there. My chinese only has pick up no seating, so you think I should tip there? Well, gotta go paint my garage. Making jumbalya tonight: Zeterins Jumalay $1.18, 1 lb. turkey sausage $1.88 1 lb. shrimp 4.99 2 tsp. hot sauce $0.00 get it free from my chili place. 1 tsp red pepper flakes (staple .25?) Garlic bread $1.00. Feeds 6 for under $10.00

Much to SecondTry's dismay, Richard is straight

Don't have a IHOP I would have to drive 60 miles to go to one. We do have a Damons but we usually go there, but if I ever pick up I will be sure to leave a tip. and I will tell them this is courtesy of Kristl. LOL

I just wish people understood that it's appropriate to tip something even when picking up to go food. No, you aren't getting table service, so the tip doesn't have to be as much. But you are receiving a service (the ability to get a restaurant's food whenever you want it and wherever you want to eat it).

You are either asking someone like a bartender to get away from his or her own service to put together your to-go food or you are asking a server to run a to-go station instead of table service. I can only speak for PF Chang's, since to-go food was only incidental in my other restaurants (for instance, in my current restaurant, we might only do 3 or 4 to-go orders a week), but at Chang's, you have either one or two servers or "to-go specialists" making 2.13 an hour in order to process $1500 to 2500 worth of to-go food a night (an average section in the restaurant only generates $600 - 1000). These guys are juggling as many as 8 different orders at the same time. They compete with in house food for the kitchen's attention, they have to answer the phones, get the order correct (not always easy to do when not talking on the phone), assure that special needs are met (no garlic, extra shrimp, gluten free, etc.), make sure that the food is ready to go at the promised time regardless of what's going on in the restaurant, assemble and package the orders, and ring out the guest while pulling everything from the bag to do a final check that everything is what the customer ordered, sometimes while 4 or 5 people are waiting for their orders as well.

Generally, at the end of the night, the tip average for these people was just about 10%. There would be about 10 or 20 percent of people who left no tip whatsoever, but there were enough people who still tipped 15 - 20% to make up for that (the majority of customers tipped 10%). So, on a $2500 night, which was a pounding, I can assure you, two servers would split around $250, but they'd still have to tip out the food runners (usually around $40 for a big night like that), who would be required to help with the packaging. Think about how much food $2500 is in a restaurant like Chang's where the average per person cost is $20 (including beverages and wine). So they'd make just about what most tableside servers would make after tipout. Of course they didn't wait on people hand and foot, but they served double the number of people and still had a lot of behind-the-scenes service to accomplish to assure a satisfactory customer experience.

It's a bit different than getting a sack of McDonald's, although I understand that it's hard for the customer to see it. Still, I think that 10% is appropriate. The alternative would be to pay these servers $10 or $15 an hour to do the job since that's what they're giving up to do the job and this would drive up menu costs for everyone, even those dining in the restaurant and not taking advantage of this optional service. Or, of course, you could pay the servers by adding on a to-go surcharge to pay the salary needed for people to do that job. But I have to wonder how many people would object to that.

Personally, I think offering to-go food cheapens a restaurant because is a sub-optimal way to present your food, but I also understand the need for many people to want to take advantage of this service, considering how on the go many of us are and how rush-rush Americans seem to be in terms of dining.

Hope this give you food for thought.

OOOPs, I screwed up the quote that was me not SecondTry. and also a big mea culpa for thinking Richard was gay. Don't want to open up that can of worms.

Ok if the quickfire is mis en place who is the strongest?? I guess it depends on how the teams shake out---could it be boys against the girls?? Richard and Dale looked the strongest as far as knife skills go in the veg plate QF and Lisa sucked. I think Nikki was weak during that challenge too! I sure hope Steph rebounds from the last 2 weeks.

But his heterosexuality is, in fact, to my dismay, so the original statement is still accurate.

YIPE . . .what tripe !!!

Y'mean that over age doughboy with a blowtorch in one fist and an egg beater to comb his hair in the other? Even when my hormones were pumping iron forty years ago I'd be running away in the opposite direction . . .

No no, I didn't mean doggie bags. I meant takeout food. The presentation is never very good, there's the travel time and reheating issue, etc.

I felt that way at Chang's as well even though Chinese is a traditional to-go worthy food (Chang's only having a passing similarity to Chinese food) <chuckle>.

YO [expletive deleted]!
In Marrisa's chow interview she mentions that they knew about it right outside of the store and production people on site told them that they would have to consult with a senior producer or some such nonsense.

Translation: We are going to plead dumb and not let you bring the stuff back to the store until we get the maximum drama value from it.

And this is Marissa that said this not Otto, she was the accuser. And if you watch the episode again you see the back of one of the Highlanders driving away with Otto doing a voice over saying "hey i think we got a free case of lychees" or something to that effect. So it's pretty clear its just more Bravo editting shenanigans.

Pretty much right on except for the whispering part. I don't think it was Marissa's idea to tell Tom. I bet the whole team wanted to take care of it way before that. But Tom was brought in for maximum drama effect. By the time Judges table rolled around Marissa knew her only chance to stay was Otto getting the boot.

Before anyone predicts who will be strongest at mise en place, may I remind everyone of Casey and her knives? LOL Who would have predicted that or seen it coming? Or that Hung, as talented as he is, would do things with knives that make one worry about his early childhood?

But, I'll go with Rady and say Richard and Dale seem strongest on the skills drilled into culinary institute grads. With Nikki bringing up the rear. Not that she isn't probably a lovely woman, just.....

My bets are all on Dale but Andew may really surprise us.

Well now that I typed that.....yeah...lol
He knows knives probably.

SECURITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Casey was unbelievabley bad!!! And that was only with an onion!!!

I think tonite artichokes are included in the challenge, should be interesting.

Ah. Thanks. I kept counting zeros because they run together on me. Wasn't sure what it meant.

Did Gail even mention Stephaine's dish or how it tasted? Nope. That's pretty telling. I usually like Gail but how she can call Mark's food sloppy when Stephanie produced This! I'm sorry but it looks like barf. Excuse me. Barf on a bed of overcooked cous cous.

Tom's blog never makes on referense to the taste and actually has to throw production under the bus in order to justify the offing.

"In retrospect, I think the episode was cut in a way that made it seem we took the greatest issue with Stephanie's dish when in actuality, we debated long and hard about them all, and Mark's emerged as the least favorite of the bunch."

Yes Tom please tell us how Padma saying she destested it and it was disgusting was editting? Mayb they can cut that out along with you calling it "offputting" and mentioning that the Cous Cous was overcooked. Please.

Lee Anne said his Curry was not great but not bad either. And again she made no mention of Stephanie's dish aside from calling it bizzare.

Bringing up the kids as a means to judge the food is a sham because:
A. They never gave the food to all the children.
B. Stephaine made a dessert. Which furthers the likelyhood that she in actuallity spent far more than $10 to produce peanutbutter tomato and chicken slurry with overcooked cous cous.

Why Padma doesn't have a blog this week? Is she too busy being pretty? It's probably because she could never justify keeping a meal she found disgusting and Tom has already had to try and evoke the "editting" fairies as an excuse once.

Add in the fact that the $10 paramiters of the challenge were not only unrealistic but violated by other competitiors, of which Mark's degree seemed to be the least, and it's no wonder why he got dinged for his dish being lacking.

So what were left with is the "judging is arbitrary based on production" corollary.

Oh yeah.... I told ya' we got a Chang's here recently and it is terrible....What the hell are they passing that food for????

I would never want to work fine dining again.
WAY too many tip outs and you can't have any fun.

I can make what you make at an IHOP almost on graveyards and let the pretense stay at fancy schamncy's whilst they pour the wine swizzle spit and go on about the oaky nutty fruity and bask in the glow of how important they are.

Not all rich peeps are like that of
course......but many are.

Do you have a wine steward or sommelier??
One more person to tip out to if


EDIT: No..I can more than what you make..lol

Bartenders and drunks TIP!!!

It was Tom who called Mark's dish sloppy. And how can you say it was telling that it wasn't shown having her comment on Stephanie's food? Maybe she didn't find it as objectionable as you (or Padma) did? In fact, she did call it out as a dish that showed that she didn't really know how to cook that type of food.And she was shown definitely agreeing with Tom on the peanut butter/tomato thing.



And maybe, just maybe, he's telling the truth. Since you think he's a liar, and this reinforces that, you'll never believe it though.



Funny how production might favor a cute soundbite as opposed to 30 minutes of debating which dish was worse.



Yes, the conspiracy is deeply entwined. Even the grips are involved. Frankly, I'm surprised that she would say that, just as you were surprised that the guest judge would say that Stephanie's and Mark's dishes both tasted good (certainly not what he said on the show).



But you don't know that for a fact. And maybe the fact that she did offer something tasty worked in her favor and balanced out the "badness" of the dish. Maybe if Mark had done that as well, he wouldn't be gone. And who knows how his side dish tasted. Sounded pretty underwhelming to me.

A. is irrelevant.



It's possible. It's possible that she didn't feel like she stood up for opinion enough. It's possible that she feels steamrolled by the other three judges. Or, she might just be toking on a big fattie.



Unproven allegation that is not a fact. Dismissed.



It was a minimum effort that deserved to be dinged. It showed no balance, a wacky flavor profile, an offering of a super-sweet dish to children, looked grim, had no imagination, was ill-conceived for the challenge, and certainly didn't seem to maximize the $10 at all. And, normally when you add a green vegetable to add nutrition, you don't add something as empty as cucumbers (something that Gail pointed out).



Well, you're left with that, but you're always left with that.

Sounds like reverse snobbery to me...

Umm I'll get back to ya.

Not at all....I've been there Tele..I know...As a server and in my own life...Succsessful rich peeps think they are entitled just as some poor peeps do.
On the whole and in general.

You know I am right

Is Publix a grocery store? We only have Kroger and Walmart Supercenter here. After I had carpal tunnel surgery the boys would help me out with the groceries and I would tip them. BTW the surgery didnn't work, still hurts when I'm on the puter to much.
Also the manager is a woman. You don't swing both ways do ya? LOL

Hi all,
When it comes to tipping, I always make sure to give the waitress/er at least 15%, even if the service was really bad.
In my profession, it is polite to reply with something after service has been rendered.

Gosh, I respect all the servers out there. I tried it in my early years, and lasted about a day and 1/2 before I was fired. I was awful. Got good tips though cause they guys must have thought I was cute. (Either that or they felt sorry for me.)

LOL!!

Only on Tues. and Saturdays
Padma turned me.

Is she cute???????

If the service is bad 15% and that means that you did not even SAY I am sorry I am so busy or something.
I can forgive a server anything if they are nice
about it......and I have.

RUDE and bad.....very little.

If they are too stupid to figure out that being gracious will make them money than they better go to work somewhere else.....I attribute it to poor training and management...You keep up on that stuff....You are on top of that.

YES .....you can teach someone manners.

Believe it or not IHOP has one of the BEST training programs around...It's accredited and fantastic.
We implemented those techniques at our places...But many of the IHOPS I go to you would
never know it.

Hiya Mluv...Good to see you out and about

I think she is beautiful! Am I allowed to say that? Iread somewhere that she doesn't vote, is that true? She does have some strong opinions.

If you give them a tip for doing a bad job, what is their incentive to do a good job? Reminds me of schools only giving pass or fail grades so nobody feels bad. Call me old fashion, but work hard, be rewarded. Don't and be left no tip. (although one waitress cried the whole time we were at a resteraunt. A family member had died and she didn't have the money to go home. On a $5.oo tab, I gave her a $20.00 tip) Another waitress told me what was wrong, so I don't think it was a scam.

Awww...... How sweet of you.
It would take a WHOLE lot for me to leave nothing.

My son wanted me to recently but I couldn't do it.
I left way less than ususal but something.
When I first started working at IHOP it was near the hood.

I had many less than savory peeps come through and I was naive sorta'.
Well not really...but when you see a lady with a baby saying she can't eat...So I gave her some money and my manager/b/f Tony told me...That was great but she is a known crack head.
I was like Oh man...I got scammed.
So he said .......it doesn't matter.

You gave it and what she does with it is not your problem.
You gave it and in God's eyes that
was ok..He was a Christian for 5 minutes lol
He was EVERYTHING for 5 minutes.
That guy was amazing..But we fed many peeps there..Tom ...my other manager and still my very good friend and Tony and I were a team.
We had it going on.

Oh and I meant is the manager cute at Walmart
I know Padma is gawjus!!!!

Manager was at Damon's. And have you ever seen a female version of the guys on Deliverence? Need I say more LOL

LMBUMOFF!!!!!

I don't care....Does she have a 401k????

Oh and Shy....No green ...No red...please

The green and purple......ahhhhhhh

My inner gay man is very offended

Plus I couldn't read it ...That's the ticket.

Don't know, can't get past the teeth! Back to the show...how long do you think it will be before we have a new thread for Epi #9. ANY wagers out there?

I thought we agreed on green! Well my favorite color is purple, but you have that, my second fav is yellow, but that doesn't show up. I agree about the red, and well black is just so ordinary, what do you suggest?Is this burgandy? I like this one.

I am also from the Old Fashion town which seems nowadays a very looooong time ago and far away; but I have learned that even a 15 percent takes care of them bringing your order for you, from the kitchen to your table I believe in "rewarding" you for WHAT you have done and if I see it fit, I will reward you accordingly, I do that out of respect.

The biggest tip was no tip at all and one penny meant that there is no price on the service that you have redered.

Then again, time and beliefs (cultural for that matter) have changed in some places and you respect whatever their actual cultural beliefs are.
I do reward my students accordingly. Some might deserve a lot more than others. They pay for their actions, is no doubt about that.

Hi KK!
How's going?

I apologize for trying to post from memory which is not what it used to be, if it ever was. So I went and dug out of storage a tape I made of the lychee episode two seasons ago.

First, Elia, Marissa, Marcel and Otto were part of a team - Team Korea.
During the shopping Otto had a store employee put the case of lychees on the bottom of Elia's shopping cart. When the team is at the checkout register, Elia and Marissa are unloading the cart so the cashier can tally up the groceries. In the background, Marcel has a second cart and Otto is taking up the rear - it appears that he has no cart. Marcel is the one with the money and he steps forward to pay for the team's groceries. In the next scene Otto is seen pushing Elia's cart of bagged groceries (with the lychee's still on the bottom of the cart) out of the store. Just before he closes the door to the SUV he mentions the lychees being free. As the SUV leaves the store Marissa's voice is heard moralizing over the lychees.

The part that I mentioned about Marissa wanting to return the lychee's and production stopping her was from another forum when lycheegate was a hot topic.

But again, I still can't figure how Otto took the rap for the lychee's when he was at the rear of the line at the cash register and why didn't either Elia and Marissa place the lychee's on the checkout counter since it was those two who were unloading the cart? Secondly, since it was Marcel who had the money and paid the cashier, obviously he didn't itemize the receipt because if he had I would have hoped that he would have noted the lychees were not listed.

Well... it's hours away from Wedding Wars, and I already just so do not like this episode.

And FYI, it is supposed to be a supersized episode. Don't know, maybe it's 75 or 90 minutes long.

According to Cohen, "Tonight is one big, bad, badass episode of "Top Chef" - so much so that we had to Supersize it! The Quickfire is the classic mis en place relay race, followed by one of the toughest challenges in "Top Chef" history as the chefs stay up for 36 hours straight to cater a wedding.

Well, sounds dumb to me.

Who would hire any chef or team of chefs to cater a wedding, if they do not in fact specialize in catering? If they have not catered lots of weddings before?

Honestly, that's as far from real life as having the chefs do upscale BBQ on the slopes of Mt. Everest.

And making them stay up for 36 hours?

Oh yeah. Clever.

This season hasn't clicked for me yet and the clicking seems increasingly unlikely.

That is my biggest complaint about this season. It seems they're always catering. They are chefs, not caterers. Where are the individual challenges? Few and far between.

Thanks for letting us know. I'll have to pick up a fresh tape after work, because I'm not sure there's enough room on my existing one for an extended episode.

Chucole, I really have a sense that this season, to a large extent, the TC producers are really just phoning it in. Apart from the disappointing cooking that we've seen, the challenges just haven't been what they could be. Last week's "Common Threads" a pretty obvious example of that.

Good Photo...


Set your recorders now, everyone. Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi will be appearing on Friday's Oprah for the show's first ever Sandwich Showdown!

Honestly, what's better than the combo of Padma and sandwiches? Padma and Harold Dieterle and sandwiches! Yup -- he'll be on too.

Check out a preview HERE.

My sons 8 yr old friend thinks that Padma is "Smokin' Hot".

A Padma-Dieterle ceviché sammich....

Tom calls Mark's sloppy. I guess that makes Stephanies super duper sloppy then.
Gail absolutely left it out. In her other blogs she mentions the other dishes and how they tasted. She goes into great detain as to how bad the stuffed mushroom was or How Marks chowder tasted. In this blog we get Nada. They can't ever possibly justify their decision if they mention how bad Stephanies food tasted so they just pretend it never happened.



Why should we believe it when the guy can't even remember who the top three on the episode were?



Tom Calls it "offputting" Padma calls it "disgusting" and says she "detested" it. I don't see how 30 minutes of them trying to figure out how to send Mark home and save Stephanie for a female top chef angle or simple past performance, will convince anyone that the right decision is made. It's more likely that well get 30 minutes that completely indictes the way the show is run.



The grips could be waiting for 3 days to eat and not want a taste of Stephanie's disaster. I'm not surprised that Lee Anne said that Mark's food was probably fair/average.
Nor am I surprised that she was not allowed to say how bad Stephanies was. The Guest's comments on the show and the blog are completely at odds with themselves so I really don't know where his head is.




Uh and what do you know for a fact about this show? Lee Anne's blog spells it out: She made an apple dessert. Of course the kids will like that. Mark probably could have made a great curry and apple dessert would have carried the day with the kids so it's a not a relevant point of comparison.
Not to mention the fact that they said family of four and it turned out to be 4 kids was deliberately misleading and Mark says his recipie would have changed accordingly.

Uh how is deliberately misleading people irrelevant. Saying "it was the childrens least favorite" implys that all the children ate it which was not the case and makes it a very dubious way to support Mark's elimination.



Steamrolled by Tom is more like it. Especially considering he bragged about being head judge and getting his way on the Chow interview.
And it's good that you point out Padma's penchant for the herb. If a pothead with the munchies wont eat something it's pretty bad.




Proven fact! Here is the link!
Impossible to feed a family of four with $10 at Whole Food$
LMAO Readmitted as undeniable.



Your minimum effort/maximizing $10 point is rendered invalid by the proven pantry shenanigans. Second episode in a row that rewards cheaters and penalized people who followed the "rules".
Cucumbers are about as empty as canned diced tomatoes right? Mark's dish probably provides more vitamins than Stephaine's now that I think about it.




And yet you still can't disprove it.

Fixed it!

LOL! She married Salman Rushdie and then went through one crazy messy divorce. I'd say she's got some strong opinions... just not sure of the political aspect

Too true, Simon. Food in a pressure cooker gets tender... Chefs in one get kinda tough and hard to swallow.
If that was my event they catered after no sleep for 36 hours I'd be more than a little irritated. There is no way you can be at the peak of perfomance when you're sleep deprived.
Those folks don't specialize in catering except if you factor in previous challenges. At that point you might not want to draw attention to past cluster clucks.
We'll watch because we can't help ourselves but for me I think it will be in horror.

Hey Chucole.
They probably did all the team challenges so they could pick and chose more carefully who they eliminated. And they also force interpersonal byplay which leads to conflict and conflcit leads to ratings. Speaking of which it's sweeps month right now. These are the ratings that will be used to see how much shows are commanding for Ad revenue. Top Chef has clearly built up Wedding Wars to be a big event. Is it going to be a big deal if all the chefs do a good job and make great food? Nope. Is it going ot be a big deal if they chefs go off on each other and potentially ruin a wedding. Oh yeah. Wedding Wars will be the reality TV equivilent to people rubbernecking at a highway accident. Everyone will want to see the mess. Ratings bonanza for Bravo.