Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I feel like I'm going to start to dislike Michael Voltaggio even more next week after his "Kevin's food is what I cook on my day off" comment. Sorry Michael, but as impressive as your food might look sometimes, I want to eat every single thing that Kevin throws out there even more.

Also, for all future Top Chef contestants, the day on the show that you are caught saying "I don't really do this, but I thought I'd try it" is the day you go home. Look at Kevin, he cooks what he knows, and does it better than anyone else.

Salumi didn't have the Lardo Lollipops when I was living in Seattle, now I want to head back and try those. I don't suppose there are images of the food from this meal?

I also want to point out that the person that made the comment at the Economist, as well as 95% of people out there, don't use BMI correctly. BMI should not be used as an individual level tool to see if you are overweight or underweight, as all the examples given (Lance Armstrong, Football teams, etc...) have shown. BMI is a good population level tool where you can have large populations. So, comparing Portland to Seattle on BMI is a fine use, or two high schools, but not two people.

The media likes to use BMI because it's simple and anyone can calculate it, and there isn't a good alternative out there. When used by researchers to show that the average BMI is increasing, it has value, but basing a tax off of it would be a horrible idea.

Having never watched this before last night, it seemed that unlike Top Chef, where you can have a different background as a chef and still succeed, it seems that here you can't win if you have no background as a line chef in a kitchen. The first contestant sent home seemed to have no idea about how to salvage an appetizer, they all had no idea how to get their timing right for sending dishes out, and I have no idea what was wrong with the man cooking the lamb dish that seemed to just destroy rack after rack of lamb to send out something that was awful.

I was really wishing for them to send multiple people home - Accidentally freezing the salmon was a mistake, but to me not nearly as bad as taking a 45 minute break in the middle of service, or fighting with the waiters, or serving raw chicken, or not knowing how to season lamb, or cut a grapefruit, or when to fire an entree of scallops, etc... For the show, the contestants seem to lack any of the necessary skills, and when you listen to them talk to the camera, they seem to lack any sense of perspective as to how under qualified they actually are. Overall, a pretty awful show for actually seeing if people can cook.

As someone that lives in the area, my wife and I also found the fact that the Slim Jim plant exploded funny, until we found out that people died, then it wasn't as funny of course. A friend of ours went on a tour of that plant 3-4 years ago while in college, and he hasn't eaten any pepperoni or jerky since then, which doesn't really make me want to eat a Slim Jim myself.

Though it's going to be really hard for me, I gave up meat for breakfast and lunch, since it's not environmentally sustainable for everyone to eat as much meat as they do, and I can afford to make the change. Mostly this is because I looked at a graph of the carbon footprint for a pound of meat recently so I'll only be eating beef 1-2 times a month as well. I figure that it's probably healthier for me is a good side effect, now to just find a vegetarian cookbook (I'll be ordering Mark Bittman's today I think).

As someone who used to travel for work almost every other week, and loves to eat out, but also had a more limited expense account for it (though I often went over and paid the cost myself, since getting an $80 meal for $40 is still pretty good), my usual habits would be:

- Bring food for breakfast (granola), and buy some yogurt, to not waste money on breakfast, and to eat a little healthier.
- Use Chowhound before you go, as it led me to a few places I wouldn't have found otherwise.
- I'd research lots of Cheap Eats as well. As someone that loves a good cheeseburger more than anything, I'd go get one at least once a week on the road, and that meal would save enough that I could splurge on the next meal.
- Sitting at the bar was great as I didn't need a reservation, my service would often be faster, and if I didn't want to talk to someone (since on the road you're often dealing with people all day long and need a break) they would have something on TV to watch usually.
- If I could find a good Happy Hour (McCormick and Schmicks has a really great one), I'd do that quite often as well.
- If I was dining on my own at somewhere really nice, I'd almost always get exceptional service from the wait staff, and the people sitting next to me were far more likely to be friendly than if I was eating at a generic chain restaurant, which made for a much better atmosphere. I had many experiences in NYC where I'd wind up sharing entrees with the person next to me at the bar so we could both sample more as there's usually quite a few other business travelers there as well.