Birthday Shout Outs

Happy birthday to a few people today:

Charlie and Brian, my two oldest brothers, born on the same day, but two years apart.



Also, Charlotte and Bruno, our two kitties, one year old today.

April 24 is one special day!

Michael Skarn shoots first and asks questions later

The Quickfire Challenge featured lots of yummy looking desserts, like a pineapple and rum souffle, fresh young coconut, and something called a walla seed from Australia. Richard became immune and immortal, with his recipe for scallop bananas with guacamole ending up in the Top Chef cook book. You may recall that I called him for my pick for winner starting on day 1. Maybe that's not a big accomplishment, considering some of the competition.
Take Lisa, for example. Her grease collection with a few strands of hair in it is beginning to burn into my retinas in a way that does not flatter. But if she was in any way attractive, she would make up for it completely with her flat tire personality.
When the chefs went to the improv house, we were waiting for an appearance of Michael Skarn. It's always funny how surprised the chefs are when their 'leisure' activities turn out to actually be precursors to the elimination challenge.
The self-selection process allowed the hip hoppers, Spike and Andrew, to work together. They were forced to improvise while fulfilling Spike's missed opportunity to make a squash soup, due to the electrical equipment disappearing. Mark and Nikki formed the 70's shades team, which I must admit, I have an awesome pair of as well.
Judge Tom dropped the bomb by sending them packing from the kitchen to the chef's house in the middle of prep. OK, we get it, improv is the theme.
Anyway, Richard and Dale won with their purple perplexed tofu, which came as a surprise to no one.
I was routing for Lisa to get kicked off, if you couldn't have already guessed that. But instead, Jenn, who was doing it for Zoi, joined her. I guess the lesbian angle didn't inspire Bravo to keep her anymore now that her girlfriend was gone.
There was a neverending stream of innuendo during this episode, that I'm sure David Dust will quote ad nauseum.
Anyway, I have to say that this blogging thing has gotten a little cumbersome ever since the Nazis at Adsense kicked us off. I wonder how long we'll keep this up...I'm sure that the world would lament losing a great contribution to humanity if we gave this up.

A close call

We had a special guest with us as we watched Padma and the crew shamelessly sporting Bears jersies at the tailgate outside of Soldier Field (I didn't realize that there was such a lag between filming and airing of these shows). Yes, we welcomed our favorite third wheel foodie, Ms. Jessica Sum, who delivered me some bangin' goodies from DiBruno Brothers: Some Calamata olives, mole sausage (made by Mario Battali's father!), and a block of chocolate tinged cheese. Forgive me, Jess, for the bad description and the third wheel comment, I was just joking!

So, the chefs were back in lowbrow cooking mode with the tailgate theme for the elimination challenge. The quickfire was more interesting again, because the challenge was to pair a dish with a beer. There a lot of discussion taking place at casa de Steve'nDes, so we missed a lot, and consequently we don't have as much to say about this episode.

But here are a few excepts from our conversation:

Des: "Either Nikki is always raising her eyebrows, or she plucked them wierdly."
Steve: "Why would they have 'touch yourself'' as an option on the poll question, but not 'touch Gail?'"
Jess: "Well at least Steve warned me that his boring ass was going to be on the computer blogging the whole time."
Tom Colicchio: "Sausage is a religion."

Some of those were paraphrased.

It was a real knuckle clencher wit my man Mark on the chopping block, but he made it, as did Jess and Des's favorite person to bash, Nikki. David Dust will have a little more on the show.

The Ardmorons Top Chef Archives

Happy Tax Day

Some of blog followers might have seen this picture last year on Los's site, but it's very appropriate for today. I took this picture in DC about two years ago, and it is not a faux-to.

Here's a more recent picture from last Saturday:



The big guy almost stepped on Des and I as he used the seat backs as a staircase. Never noticed how big the Phanatic's shoes were until then.