Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Beecher's cheese is delightful. Amazingly enough, you can find it in the deli case at Byerly's in Minneapolis.

Get yourself some Flagship, some of that smoked paprika salami from Salumi, put 'em both on some rustic crusty bread drizzled with olive oil, wash, rinse, and repeat until craving is satiated.

Beecher's mac and cheese is what? amazing??? ... Snap out of it!!! It's flabby, gluey and ordinary at best. I shudder at the thought of that glop actually being shipped .... auuggghhh. More proof that tourists like anything that they can't get at home....

I love the food network and I watch Almost everything on cooking. I am sad to say watching "Chopped" is a joyless experience...There is nothing fun about this show! Ted Allen always seems like he wants everyone to have a sweet and wonderful time, but not here ! I think in these times we need some lightness and FUN!! This show should be exciting and inspiring..not ridiculously unfair in judgment and bland..It is not too late to change the format..hopefully!

I totally missed this! How odd.

Hillary
Chew on That

I was so excited to see Ariene Duarte on Iron Chef! Yes, her and her husband own CulinAriene, a fine dining restaurant and catering operation in New Jersey. They have a website www.culinariane.com that shows their menus and pricing. Reviews are great and they say the food is out of this world. I think the TV nerves got to her on Top Chef, but she totally rocked it out on Iron Chef with Chef Freitag. They only lost by a point to Flay, and that says something!

I caught her in battle King Crab (I was drooling...)!

I find it kind of funny that both former top chef contestants I saw as iron chef competitors were both competing as sous chefs...

Yes, KB, you are correct. Ariane did a great job. I was happy to see that. Go Ariane!!

I also noticed she burned a dish that had to be done over again....

@mrlancestuckey: There is no fake drama because there is no drama at all.

@chiff--it's nice to know that my mind is 'thinking alike' like you, gives me hope for my culinary future ;) I guess tomato soup and sugary cookies together made Shirley Temple a pioneer of culinary fusion.

Speaking of animal cracker cooking--America's Test Kitchen used animal crackers for a lemon cheesecake crust. Looked yummy. No prunes, though.

Casing or sausage casing is the material that contains and encloses the filling of a sausage. Casings are typically divided into two categories, natural and artificial.

Natural casings are made from the submucosa, a layer of the intestine that consists mainly of collagen. The fat and the inner mucosa lining are removed. Natural casings tend to be brittle once cooked and tend to "snap" when the sausage is bitten. They may also rupture during the cooking process; often, this indicates that the cooking was done too rapidly. Natural casings may be hardened and rendered less permeable through drying and smoking processes. Natural casings are generally made from porcine or ovine intestine(answers.com)

In Chicago, David Berg hot dogs used to rule but it looks like they are now distributed by Vienna. Hebrew National 1/4 LB dinner franks are a close #2.
Vienna all beef franks are quite tasty too.
Clogged arteries thanks in part to consumption of high fat foods has forced me to look for a lower fat alternative. I have tried dozens of franks & sausages trying to find a good tasting, low fat weiner (under 10 grams of fat).
I have had many disgusting dogs in this quest. It still amazes me that some of the soy dog manufacturers have not been marched out in front of a firing squad. I really enjoy Applegate farms chicken sausages, Hoffys and Johnsonville Turkey cheddars, all have about 6-9 grams of fat and would satisy the most hardcore dog lover. I have had people over at cookouts that preferred the Hoffys' dinner dogs to any other dog that they said they have tried.