What a bizarre, anticlimactic ending to Top Chef. While I'm sad for Carla and sorta glad Stefan didn't win, Hosea is just... strange. And who'd have expected that little flash of compassion from Stefan at the very end? Huh.

Also, is Gail back at judges' table? It was hard to see behind the boobs.

The judges on Chopped are seriously mean. Alex Guarnaschelli may have cried in last week's episode when the winner broke down himself, but otherwise she's a steely bitch totally unlike her demeanor on The Cooking Loft. It also seems like even though the cockiest chefs on Top Chef are the ones that tend to do well, the most confident ones on Chopped are booted early on; they generally get burned (ho, ho) by the time limitations.

Continuing to clean out the fridge, I made a crustless quiche today based on a Veggie Times recipe using a pile of fresh(ish) spinach, some green onions I didn't know I had, and the rest of the pico de gallo (it's finally all gone!). A little on the bland side mostly because there's only a 1/4 cup of shredded parmesan when most quiches are much cheesier, but this is a good basic recipe into which you could throw all kinds of leftovers to use them up.

I'm hanging at home today because the property management is doing their periodic inspection of smoke detectors and pipes. Because they need access to the bathroom, I can't just lock up the cats and there's no way I'm sticking them in their crates all day (the time window is 9.30 to 4.30) so I'm here so the cats don't freak and scuttle out an open door. It's nearly 2.00 now and they haven't been by yet, so I made the quiche for lunch and am getting caught up on soaps while I monitor what's going on at work via email and IM.

I still don't get where Fox finds the chefs on Hell's Kitchen. Anyone who knows anything about GR knows that he is psycho about chefs knowing where the food, especially the protein, comes from and being comfortable with butchering as well as cooking it. Anyone aspiring to be an elite chef, furthermore, ought to know that sweetbreads are considered delicacies and unless they're a vegetarian/vegan (in which case, why are you even on the show?) should welcome the opportunity to learn, even if it's not especially appetizing at first.

Speaking of not actually watching the show before you're on it, what's with Coach's all-black ensemble on Survivor? Is he insane? They always shoot in a hot climate. He's not only creepy but apparently an idiot to boot.

And what's up with the Subaru commercial in which the dad has enrolled his little boy in Brownies? Subaru Foresters are often considered lesbian cars, but this seems to portray some gender confusion on the part of small children or their parents. Bizarre.

Food this weekend was all about using up leftover ingredients in the fridge without leaving the house. When you cook for yourself, you end up tossing a lot more stuff than you'd like, especially produce. The amazing Debbie Meyer GreenBags and BreadBags have helped alleviate a lot of that, but I still want to eliminate as much waste as possible. Plus, it was raining really hard and I was in no mood to go out.

Some of it was easy: to use up the rest of the roasted red peppers I needed for the yellow rice & chicken dish I threw them in with a new batch of the yogurt & lemon hummus and it turned out fantastic.

To use up the half head of cabbage leftover from the soup last week using what was on hand, I poked around the 'net until I found a few recipes for cabbage stroganoff. I went with this one (halved) since it did not call for beef bullion cubes, which I do not have. Yes, it's true. It came out as a kind of sweet and sour cabbage casserole, not stroganoff-y at all but quite yummy. I actually didn't have any paprika on hand either, so I tossed in some cumin, turmeric, cayenne and a tiny pinch of cinnamon to get a kind of Middle Eastern flavor to go with the last of the plain hummus served on cracker bread. I think you can pretty much use any spices you want and it'll come out ok. I used greek yogurt in place of the sour cream, so between this and the red pepper hummus that was pretty well taken care of, too.

The cabbage casserole made enough for 2-3 large side servings, so last night I broiled up a yellowfin tuna steak I found in the freezer (olive oil, cracked black pepper and chopped dill from the ill-fated tofu stroganoff experiment). Yes, I ate a large piece of fish and it wasn't at all bad. Thank goodness the weather was fairly warm last night so I could keep the windows open and get rid of the smell.

When I was buying the pico de gallo for the rice & chicken, the checker mentioned how much she liked that particular brand and often used it to perk up her homemade linguine with clam sauce. Tonight I mixed up a batch of my mom's clam sauce and tossed in some pico de gallo at the end (I have a lot left since I didn't think it worked with the chicken) and it adds a whole new dimension to white clam sauce. Try it sometime.

Mom's White Clam Sauce

4 servings

1 stick of butter
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 cans minced clams & juice (which happen to be on sale for $0.99 this week at Rite Aid)
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Italian seasoning
salt & pepper to taste
1/2 cup white wine
juice from 1 lemon

Melt butter, add garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add the other ingredients except for lemon juice and simmer for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Serve over linguine.

Next time I will probably add the pico de gallo a few minutes before taking off the heat to soften the onions a bit but not make the tomatoes too mushy.

I also discovered that Isis loves clams. Really loves clams. Koosh is not interested in the least, but Isis keeps banging on the pantry door because she thinks I'm hiding them in there.

Last night was a successful food night: I made a recipe from the newspaper, Chicken with Yellow Rice and Salsa (says it was originally from the Kansas City Star). Tasty and quick, I'd definitely make it again. The only things I'd tweak would be the chicken--I thought the breast cubes turned out a little bland even after throwing the cumin and lime juice in before they were completely done. Next time I might try thigh meat for a little more flavor. It also calls for fresh salsa for serving, which I didn't think it really needed and in fact made it too onion-y.

The other triumph is, finally, a good hummus. I've been working on various hummus recipes which all turn out either with a too-strong tahini flavor, or with a bland-ish oily flavor. Then I read somewhere that you can use yogurt instead of olive oil, and since I have greek yogurt leftover from the stroganoff, I made this recipe and it turned out great. A little bland even though I added a dash of red pepper flakes, but a good start.

Yay!

There's a lot of snark being lobbed at Sandra Lee's new magazine. I bought the first issue a couple weeks ago but haven't had a chance to do more than flip through it while I was on the phone, and my only impression so far is that it's hella pink. I generally only watch her show for its high camp entertainment value, and the only recipe I've ever thought looked remotely appetizing didn't turn out to be.

I did see the clip of her making her "burrito casserole" on Good Morning America. It's frozen burritos covered in sauce and cheese and microwaved. I'm stunned she had the nerve to do this on national television. While many moms have, in moments of desperation, dumped tuna into Kraft mac & cheese and fed it to their kids, none to my knowledge then went on tv and called it a lifestyle to be proud of.

I happened across a new (to me) show in I.D. (Investigation Discovery) called Ross Kemp on Gangs (The I.D. website calls it Gang Nation, for some mysterious reason). Ross Kemp played Grant on EastEnders back when EastEnders was interesting, and he apparently did this series originally for Sky1 in Britain. I've only seen the El Salvador episode so far (Moscow's on the dvr), but it was good. Not Frontline by any means, but well-done and informative. I'm guessing that Ross is able to gain access to some of these people because he looks a bit like a gang member himself.

Obviously Dan Piraro has had the same experiences with cab drivers as I've had

Not much cooking at home lately, but I did make this yummy Indian twist on guacamole from 28 Cooks last week. Very good with warm naan.

I'm noticing with the Shangri-La oil thing that I have to plan ahead more carefully for meals because if I'm only eating full meals once a day, they need to be good, not just whatever happens to be most convenient. I kind of fell off the wagon a bit this weekend having 8-year old Amanda over since it was hard to time the 2 hour windows for taking the oil, and I had to eat on her schedule. I also have to be careful about not eating out of habit when I'm not actually hungry.

Amanda and I had fun: we watched Madagascar 2 and Kit Kittredge An American Girl (highly recommended). We had a pillow war and colored and danced around a lot and did our hair and ate pepperoni pizza and bagels. Amanda fell in love with my Growing Hair Crissy doll (no idea why I still have her, but I do) and I had to tell her several times that she could not keep her.

Though I'm still mad Jamie went home, last week's Top Chef was great; I adore Jacques Pepin and his giant bow tie. Not sure why they had to film the Last Supper panelists through Vaseline, however. It didn't fool anyone--we know they're all old. Am now hoping Carla wins.

Shangri-La update: Not hungry, had trouble figuring out what to have for dinner last night and lunch today

While I like Chopped, the judges have made two decisions lately that set some dubious precedents. On last week's show they were willing to overlook one contestant's not using all the ingredients, and on this week's episode they let pass the chef who dropped his protein on the floor before serving it. Now any contestant who makes a convincing case for "forgetting" to include an ingredient can conceivably get by with not using one of the oddball ingredients that he can't make fit into his dish, and dropping meat on the floor is just a flat-out health hazard. Gordon Ramsay would have yelled his head off and possibly barfed.

On the other hand, seared watermelon sounds really good ...if I'm ever hungry again.

My mom really enjoys The Last Restaurant Standing on BBCA, and I've seen it promo'ed endlessly during The F Word, so last night when there was nothing else on I decided to give it a try. By the end I think my blood pressure had spiked into the red zone. The level of tension and grim desperation on the show is truly unbearable.

And did that couple actually try to serve up Welsh-Chinese food? What is that, exactly?

I went to a dinner party a couple of weeks ago thrown by a friend from library school, and one of the other guests was a psychology professor who wrote a diet book a few years back called The Shangri-La Diet. The basic premise that you can fool your brain into lowering your body's set point by slurping down a couple tablespoons of unflavored oil each day. Rita has been doing it since she had her baby and has lost 60 lbs total--down 20 lbs from before she got pregnant--and hasn't even been working out. She says she's only really hungry about once a day. I got the book and it's pretty interesting. Cathy and I are going to give it a try. He recommends flaxseed oil, which is quite good for you anyway. Seth is a pretty funny guy and currently teaches in Beijing.

I finished Sonny Barger's book earlier this week. Even though he has very different philosophies about life than I do, it's hard not to kinda like the guy.

After letting it languish untouched for months, I've been trying to make as much progress as possible on my Cozy shawl and have almost hit the halfway point. Because I was in a hurry when I bought the yarn and didn't have the nice people wind the skeins into balls at the store, I have to do it myself at the end of each ball. This time around I managed to make an unholy mess (while trying to keep Isis from "helping") which took a good four hours to untangle and rewind. I watched all of The Last Templar, an atrocious miniseries starring Mira Sorvino as the world's most incompetent archaeologist, while I worked on it, which is how I knew it took four hours.

This recent post on one of my favorite blogs made me laugh because we used to get raccoons in the backyard in Danville all the time and it was a constant effort to keep the cats out of their way, especially Koosh. I vividly recall one morning trying to shove Isis and Sparkle out the back door, surprised that they were resisting so much when usually they were frantic to get out. It suddenly dawned on my sleep-addled brain that something odd was taking place on the deck: two gigantic raccoons were going at it. Ours weren't quite as noisy as Laurie's pair apparently was, but a disquieting experience nonetheless.

Watching Lost is a little bit like trying to follow a telenovela when you don't speak Spanish all that well: you recognize the characters, catch a phrase here and there that makes sense, but overall you have no real clue what's going on.

The tofu stroganoff was kind of a bust. I substituted a few ingredients based on what people had said in the comments, but I'm not sure it would have been much better if I'd followed the recipe exactly. Not terrible, just not something I'd make again. Plus, it left a lingering onion smell in the house that's been hard to get rid of since it's really chilly today and I can't keep the windows open for very long.

Also, jigsaw puzzles are trendy. You read it here first.

Random (mostly foodie tv) notes:

Royally pissed about the latest Top Chef; Leah totally should have packed her knives on this one. Carla is turning out to be absolutely hilarious.

Slowly warming up to Ted Allen's new show Chopped, which is like Top Chef meets Iron Chef in a dark room. Who was that contestant in this week's episode who was unclear on the concept and kept whining about the time constraints? Did he wander into the studio by mistake?

If you're on a diet, watch Man vs. Food on Travel Channel. Food has never looked more unappetizing. I DVR'ed the episode on Portland where he visited the Stepping Stone Cafe, Voodoo Donuts (of course) and Salvador Molly's. For those of you who live in Portland or thereabouts (and have cable), the episode repeats on Saturday at 8am. Salvador Molly's supposedly serves Indonesian food so we might have to check that out at some point.

Need to catch up on Lost and Gossip Girl. Not sure about whether I'm on board with Hell's Kitchen just yet.

In home cooking, I think I've moved from the garbanzo phase into a mushroom phase via that spicy cabbage soup. Most of the recipes I've pulled to try involve mushrooms in some major way. Will be trying a tofu mushroom stroganoff this weekend.

Two new things I've discovered Isis is afraid of:
1. the drawer under the oven where I keep the baking sheets
2. the plastic bag the paper comes in when it's raining

This weekend's assignment is to read Sonny Barger's biography to get in the right frame of mind for a client's game about biker gangs in the 60's. It's interesting though because a lot of the action took place very near to here in Oakland and Modesto and points in between. Also a good thing I just finished a potboiler about Tibetan monk horror on the plane back from Minneapolis because their other big triple-A title centers on that subject. We spent all day yesterday in LA mapping out plans for their 2009-10 lineup which grew quite suddenly by about 40 percent over what they'd been planning just a couple weeks ago.

One of our other clients who is currently on hiatus with us for unrelated reasons has been battling a boatload of lunatics over a sound file in a game that shipped over a year ago. We've been getting a lot of phone calls about this, and it has made for a very busy couple of weeks.

It's ridiculously warm here again, but really cold at night. Maybe we'll get some rain later this week. Keep your fingers crossed.