Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I'm glad to see some explanation here for what happened to Breyer's. It used to be my absolute favorite when I was a kid, but hasn't tasted the same in recent years.

Wow, I'm really of two minds about this. On the one hand, I can totally empathize with the server's perspective on this. Habitually lousy tippers deserve to be called on their stinginess. Plus, as a diner who tips fairly generously, I hate bad tippers because they contribute to exactly this kind of antagonistic server-patron relationship.

On the other hand, if I were a restaurant owner and found out that a server was bugging customers over tips, and very likely driving away business, I would be incredibly pissed off. As an employer, I would be very unhappy with any employee who did anything to drive away paying customers -- especially in a precarious economic climate, where restaurants need every single regular diner, even if they are bad tippers.

Ah, well. Since I tip well and I'm not a server, I got no dog in this fight. Carry on.

I'm glad they changed the logo, because if there's anything that says "grown-up" and "sophisticated," it's Wonder Bread.

What's interesting is how this question actually reflects the psychological victory of the food industry. There's only one kind of food that is "always" anything: large-scale industrially processed food. That's essentially the trade-off with this kind of food: you sacrifice quality for consistency. When you buy a box of Kraft mac & cheese or Ragu spaghetti sauce, you know exactly how it's going to taste: exactly like the last box/jar.

On the other hand, any kind of "artisanal" or non-industrialized food is going to be variable in quality or flavor, even from a single source. The fruit farmer who makes awesome handmade jam might have a great year or a mediocre year, depending on the quality of his crop. When you get produce from a CSA, it's not because you're going to get predictably great produce. Sometimes the produce is amazing; sometimes it's kinda pathetic. That's what happens when your food isn't conjured up in a lab.

Skittles are a delicious candy product!

To me, the great thing about the show is that every elimination is a chance for any of the chefs to go home. I'm as disgusted as anyone that Jamie goes home before Leah, but the fact is, it was the right call. The other two losing chefs screwed up their dishes, but Jamie's was the only one the judges deemed inedible. If they'd given her a pass on that dish, they may as well not even pretend this is a competition, and just pick the two most promising chefs after episode three and end the show in a month. Sure, we all figured it would be Stefan and Jamie at the end, but that doesn't mean they no longer have to compete or that they can't screw up and get the boot.

This was one of those episodes where you can really tell who's going home by how they behave in their interview clips. I thought Jamie had about a 75% chance of going home based on how sour she looked and sounded in her interview -- especially after she basically pooh-poohed Ripert's cooking as boring, which positively reeked of sour grapes.

I thought Jamie was a talented chef, but frankly, I'm glad to see her go. I was getting sick of her morose attitude. She clearly came into this thing expecting to trample the competition, and once she realized she was in for a real challenge, she seemed to lose interest. I would have been just as happy to see Leah go; the two of them were sucking all the joy out of the show for me.

I also can't stand reflexive chain-bashing, but in this case I have say that I've tried all of these wings (except for Papa John's) at one time or another, and find them all pretty revolting, except maybe for Popeye's. That said, I agree with RegrettableFoodie -- what the hell happened to their spicy chicken? It's so tame now, I can barely tell the diff between it and the regular. Oh well.

Anyway, wings are so easy to make at home, and homemade wings are so superior to any fast food joint, I don't know why you'd bother ordering out.

A very occasional 8,000-calorie burger isn't going to kill you anywhere nearly as quickly as a steady diet of 600-calorie Big Macs. I prefer seeing these kinds of novelty joints to corporations like McDonald's that position themselves as a source of regular family meals. For all those extremely unhealthy-looking people in that video, illness and death will come, not from the small percentage of their diet that they're consuming in that place, but the crap they're eating throughout the rest of their day. I say let unhealthy food be celebrated as something for special occasions, and save the outrage for all the junk that gets marketed as average, ordinary food.

Trade Lake Cedar from LoveTree Farmstead in Wisconsin. Mmmmm ah yeah.

Perfectly ripe watermelon.

I'm not sure how Truvia is different from regular old stevia, but stevia is OK. It really is super-sweet and has the same slightly bitter, "this is clearly not sugar" taste as other sugar substitutes, but works fine for things like tea.

When my wife and I were newlyweds, we were too poor to afford any meat that wasn't on sale. One day our local supermarket had these gigantic, ten-pound packages of assorted pork cuts for an insanely low price, so we immediately grabbed a couple. We ate nothing but pork for the next month -- baked, broiled, and in every kind of sauce imaginable -- until finally the mere smell of the stuff made us nauseated. It would be five years before I could touch the pig again.

What I love is people categorically hating the Filet-o-Fish because it comes from McDonald's. "Oh, I would NEVER eat anything from that MAC-DONALDS!!!" Thanks for letting us know. Your Certificate of Super-Specialness is in the mail.

My wife won't eat the Filet-o-Fish because she thinks combining dairy and seafood is weird. To which I respond, "OK, honey. Now how about a nice steaming bowl of CRAB BISQUE?"