Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Don't let those shills from the Utility Grade Beef Council get you down, Kenji!

Kenji's article highlights one of my biggest peeves in dining out: the bland and thoughtless sides/vegetable dishes. There are many places that can turn out great meat & carbs, but the veggies are rarely more than a garnish-sized afterthought. I'm in for the whole experience, not just the meat, when I go out and it's surprising when a place can deliver across the board. Just because I'm a dedicated meat eater doesn't mean I should suffer 4-hour-old steam tray veggie goop or bagged salad as accompaniments.

Quit drinking any sodas for a long time - like 4 months, then try them again and see that your palate was simply used to the extreme sugariness and weird flavors as well as how bitter diet sodas are. I used to drink sodas then quit. When I had some much later it just tasted funny and gave me a stomach ache. That cured me of any soda habit I had. I've got a huge sweet tooth but sodas are just way too sweet.

Naturally flavored & sweetened sodas - like Italian style sodas with lemon, grapefruit, etc... tasted fine so I have those occasionally as a cocktail with vodka. But for me, the best tasting sodas are just real fruit juice and good fizzy seltzer.

Sometime in the mid century soda went from a dessert to being a daily beverage which is just wrong.

The ads that fall flat for me but apparently work for a whole lot of people is whenever some plate of food or burger or taco gets drenched in disgusting orange cheese sauce. Applebee's and Friday's and the like are always doing that. Taco Bell too. It isn't just that the stuff always tastes bad, but that someone got paid a lot of money to dream up dumping a can of that crap over some random thing and calling it new and special.

I know there's some inexplicable *love* for orange 'cheese' goo from several writers on this site but man the stuff on those commercials just looks like oil and orange plastic melted together and you know it tastes worse than it looks.

And sorry, jlewfoodie, but that commercial that shows the globs of special sauce oozing out the side of a Big Mac had the opposite effect on me. Every few years I'll want a Big Mac and buy one, then remember that McD's meat is really bad now. Not that it was ever good to begin with...not in my lifetime.

Someday I'm just going to leave a jar of miracle whip and pickles out in the sun, wait a month, then fry up my own big mac.

With bread and Cambozola.

Didn't the cheese on pizza used to be better? There's barely any pizza place out there that I've eaten at that doesn't have cheap skim mozz on their pies, and it's horrible. For me this is what ruins most pies.

Those fake sausage nuggets are super nasty and ruin pizzas.

The British folk I've known just say Worcester/"wooster" and drop the shire/"shur" part altogether.

Also, my inner copy editor needs to mention that it's Saveur, not Sauver.

I've never understood the whole issue some have with dining alone. We have to eat and it can't always be with someone. The only place I'd feel self conscious about eating alone would be in some very romantic couples restaurant, like the old Cafe des Artistes in NYC.

Any homemade hummus beats any pre-made.

Ugg - make that "Taos Pizza Out Back".

Here, Kenji disagrees about wok vs saute pan use, but mentions at the end that smoke is a problem. http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/wok-skills-101-stir-frying-basics.html

I don't know of any fire alarms that can be turned off without removing the batteries or disconnecting them from power otherwise and many of them will alarm because they've been disconnected. For how much I stir fry and the height at which mine are placed, this is completely impractical.

I am going to get a high btu outdoor wok stand/ring that hooks up to a propane tank so I can cook at real temps without worrying about stinking up my whole house.

Stores in my part of the world carry eating apples & baking apples. The best I've had for baking is the Jonathan or Jonagold.

Seasoning/spicing.

Salting is of course very important but tuning in to the balance of sweet, sour, bitter, umami and aromatic qualities and knowing how to adjust subtlety is the difference between good to great and simply adequate to bad. Knowing how to fix mistakes through seasoning is essential.