Worst Cooks in America 1/17

We're a little behind at the moment, but we wanted to take some time for decent cooks yesterday. Now we can return to the hellaciousness that Anne and Tyler get to endure on a weekly basis.

After losing Sydney and Gospel Ty last week, we've got 10 remaining hopefuls. They enter to hear they will get to create their own flavor combinations. They get to taste a bunch of flavor samples that on the surface seem blech, but turn out fine.

Yo Gabba Gabba Donna describes the flavors as fighting and then making love in her mouth - I hope she washes afterwards. The olives and white chocolate don't seem to give anyone a pregnant pause. I'm thinking any recruit that looked like they would puke would be on the short list this week.

Time to make ice cream sandwiches! Yay! Oh, wait, the contestants are making them, nevermind. Finger-lickin Holgie has her normal confused stare as Anne demonstrates how to use the mixer and everyone else takes notes.

Tyler demonstrates the science of the cookies. I cannot WAIT to see who screws up the measurements the most. My better half is anxious to see who screws up tempering the eggs the most. It could end up being the same person colossally messing up both, though.

Oh, they get to pick their own flavor of cookie, using what they have just "learned" in flavor sampling. I hope Tyler likes olive-based chocolate cookies that have the consistency of cement. It'll be a blind taste test, which surprises Holgie that they found enough blind people to sample the dishes. My head hurts from the facepalm.

Donna is considering a basil/coconut ice cream, which sounds like it could be passable - until she gets flustered by heat. Too bad, it actually sounded like an interesting concept. Holgie is using espresso and cinnamon in her ice cream, with a peanut butter cookie - again, sounds good on paper. Rachel's going for a margarita based ice cream - OK, that sounds good too. Ernie's going for a peanut cookie, drawing on something he had with his dad.

Chanda is the winner in the who-will-screw-up-measuring contest! You get a teaspoon to hold the world's tiniest violin. It won't help in cutting her cement cookies though.

Taylor is going for a bacon and banana cookie, which sounds odd at first. Manbun Nick is making a sauce of maraschino cherry juice, chocolate, and vodka - so sweet you will get an immediate rush, I think. He seems to like it though.

GINNY THINKS HER ICE CREAM IS BETTER THAN SEX. I feel bad for her sex life. I don't want to know about her milkshake, either.

Time for the blind tasting. Chanda's is picked out right away for the cement consistency. Lazy Latina Glenda went nuts on salt and it shows. Manbun Nick's plate is a mess.

Bottoms up!

10. Chanda (cement dragged you to the bottom)
9. Glenda (salt, blech)
8. Lawrence (sprinkles galore)
7. Ginny
6. Nick (syrup backfired, misplaced on this dish)
5. Holgie
4. Taylor (bacon and banana worked well enough)
3. Ernie (good texture)
2. Donna (I'm stunned she did this well)
1. Rachel (delicious and major kudos for the margarita cookie, a win for the blue team)

Continuing to the main dish challenge, we're making empanadas! As no one there seems to know what those are (including Glenda), Anne explains the basics of them. Tyler shows turkey picadillo empanadas with lime crema. Anne is going for a pork/potato empanada with tomatillo salsa. Glenda thinks this is a really weird combination. I think Glenda is weird for thinking that it weird to have pork and tomatillos in a Cuban dish.

Glenda gets right to work drowning her pan in salt again. Lawrence is going for lamb curry flavor - creative, and Tyler likes it. Rachel's dish sounds good too, going Greek with her chicken assignment. Boston taylor is grabbing the bacon again, which is going to get tired very quickly. Manbun Nick is staying very much in the box in flavors - Spanish only and nothing else, so he's behind his competitors UNTIL he whips out the tequila. Getting judges drunk will help. Chanda is confused on what to make and sounds like she is making it up as she goes along. Ernie is cautioned against going too simple again as he did for the ice cream challenge, which halts his progress for a while as the wheels spin in his mind...and spin....and spin.... and spin. Holgie's making a nice mess, and so is Chanda. Ginny's going to try and use a bunch of things she's never tasted before to be "creative". At this exact same moment, I notice that I have no wine left, and go to get another glass.

Taylor is lost and stressed and the food processor is stumping him as time winds down. Chanda's confusion has not improved. Heck, nobody looks happy or content. Sounds like a perfect time to judge!

First up, Chicken (Taylor and Rachel): Taylor's is dry despite a good flavor profile, but Rachel's is all around good and gets the nod. 

Lamb (Glenda and Lawrence): Lawrence's is juicy but is unbalanced for sweetness. Glenda's is loaded with salt and makes both judges almost gag., 

Pork (Nick and Holgie): Holgie's didn't seal up right but taste good,. Nick's filling is dry. Holgie takes it. 

Turkey (Chanda and Ernie): Chanda actually gets good marks for a breakfast approach. Ernie tried to go Caribbean but get a stinkface from Anne. Chanda manages to take one for the red team!

Beef (Donna and Ginny): Ginny's didn't seal right either, and can't shut up. Anne looks like she wants to punch her. So do half the contestants. The dish is badly seasoned. Donna went for a mini-calzone approach and it gets good marks - it lacks salt but it's enough to win. 

Time for eliminations - my money is on Glenda to go home after getting lucky last week. I don't know about the blue team but I am guessing Ginny may go based on the first challenge playing in as well. 

Safe from Blue: Rachel's was the best this week. Also safe are Lawrence and Holgie, putting Ernie and Ginny in the bottom two. However, Ernie goes home, not Ginny. I'm surprised since he did all right in the first challenge, but Tyler felt he had stalled out and wasn't progressing so it was time to go.
Safe from Red: Chanda is at the top (not saying much considering the rest of the red team), Donna's also safe, and so is Nick. Taylor and Glenda are the bottom two. Glenda is the easy choice to go, as she flubbed both parts today and last week as well.

Tune in next week as the remaining survivors are asked to multitask in the kitchen and Holgie attempts to sell everyone some magic mushrooms so they can taste the color blue.

The Return of Worst Cooks - and how bad will it be?

It's back! The Worst Cooks in America has returned and it has gone back to the concept of finding random, "everyday" folks who couldn't cook a baked potato in a microwave. No more of this celebrity garbage.

In the casting line, we have congealed cement and orgasmic thunder, vomit, and food worse than MREs. We have spam with chocolate and mustard. We have tofu bunnies. We have a gospel singer with cement as a dish. We have a self-described lazy Latina. We have tuna fish mousse that made Anne and Tyler almost puke. We have "eco-friendly beauty lasagna" that looks like it is the remnants of someone's plastic surgery and smells like diapers.

Let's see who Anne and Tyler get stuck dealing with this year. I guess Tyler couldn't convince Bobby to come back to deal with these hopeless yokels:

Five seconds into the "prepare your best dish" and someone's

• Lazy Latina Glenda had fish of the sea. Both judges liked her. Tyler even gave her a dance. 
• Yo Gabba Gabba Donna, the Newport hairdresser who is speaking jibberish to Anne describing her dish. Her dish made Chanda gag quickly. It looked like noodles dipped in egg wash and left out for a week on the counter. 
• Lawrence, Jersey Army vet, who is abusing a steak worse than anything on the battlefield.
• Ernie the truck driver who is better hauling liquid chemicals than using them on the stove. He also thinks there is no thing as bad seafood. I shuddered. Tyler liked it though. 
• Chanda, who's got nice shoes and is too busy checking her hair in the microwave. Probably good, since her cooking may have actually killed someone. Her strategy seems to be boiling a container of bacon bits. This may put her in the top half of the field. 
• Manbun Nick is making a jailhouse burrito. And pouring boiling water into a standing bag. And wrapping it in a paper towel. On the bright side, all of his ingredients may be easily smuggled into a prison to make this dish. Convicts, we have your champion! His final product looks like a hot pocket, which may be how the items got into prison in the first place. 
• Gospel Ty is making a hot mess. His words, not mine. I agree with Anne, that crappy singing would make me want to kill him the first day too. His food is as raw as his singing. 
• Bloody Jeni is going to get the judges drunk with her Bloody Mary chicken. Again, not the worst strategy - until she adds pickle juice. Judges thought it was a crime scene
• David managed to come up from his parents' basement for this series, but is using the wrong end of the knife. Is there a medic around? He's making a BLT but using fried plantains as the bread. Eek. 
• Boston Taylor was swiftly put on the show by his girlfriend/fiancee/dominatrix/boss before his cooking kills her. His accent is so egregiously Boston that I could almost hear the Patriots bleating in his voice. 
• Finger-licking Holgie left her bongos at her geodesic dome. I don't think she left her stash of Maui Wowie behind though. She's more baked than her food. 
• Gini is multicultural! She served Spanish rice, because it had avocados from Spain (which is the same as Mexico) and French onion dip that resembled gremlin vomit. 
• Rachel served a pancake that can double as a hockey puck on Friday and a yarmulke on Saturday. She is talented enough to serve a pancake that was raw and burnt at the same time. 
• Sydney made a shepherds pie that was spit out by Anne in less than a second. It was very consistent, though - so much that it doesn't appear to be cuttable. 

Tyler ended up with Jeni, Sydney, Rachel, Gini, Lawrence, Finger-Licking Holgie, and Ernie.

Anne got Yo Gabba Gabba Donna, David , Manbun Nick (who literally flipped out over his selection), Gospel Ty, Taylor Swift, Chanda, and Glenda.

Time for boot camp. Holgie seems scared of being thrown into the fire. Maybe she'll fire one up before boot camp starts. 

Red team gets to attempt prosciutto-wrapped pork tenderloin with peach chutney and asparagus. Yo Gabba Gabba Donna is wearing two sets of glasses to see because "bifocals don't work for her". Apparently, heating pans doesn't work for her either, and ovens amaze and confuse her. Fire bad for Yo Gabba Gabba Donna! The red team gets excited for the bourbon but no one seems to be taking notes. 

Blue team will try a sticky brick chicken with creamed corn and crispy kale. Tyler tried to teach them how to break down a chicken. Two team members look like they're going to cry, and the rest seem amazed by the sorcery. At least they are taking notes, though Holgie's scared of the food processor and Rachel is confused by doing a reduction. 

Chanda seems unfamiliar what to do with a long piece of meat like that. I wouldn't have guessed that based on her shoes! Lazy Latina Glenda is having trouble reading packages as she tried to wrap pork in something other than prosciutto. David and Taylor Swift forget what "skinny" end means when they wrap their loins wrong - but their girlfriends say it's ok, it happens to all men at some point. First fire of the season goes to Rachel, who stares at it in confusion, or secret pyro adoration - I can't tell which. Manbun Nick is having more trouble with knife skills than with his backflips. Ginny has a smoking - no, fiery - pan and burned her wrist. Chanda is peeling her thumbs along with the peaches. David is having an anxiety attack brought about by peaches, and got a boo-boo with the peeler which caused him to freak out. Bloody Jeni is carrying lots of equipment around the kitchen with no clue on how to use any of them. She's also scattering her trash and knives all over the floor - disgusting.

When it comes to tasting - well, I hope Anne and Tyler took antibiotics beforehand. 

Ernie's dish is good but incomplete because he decided not to serve underdone chicken - good move. Sydney's presentation is good and she gets decent marks. Jeni's dish is as messed up as she is, making Tyler gag with how overdone it is. Ginni gets good reviews. Holgie serves "the best creamed corn so far". Rachel has anemic color, no glaze, and her food tastes like fear. 

Anne reviews her team. David's asparagus is OK but other elements are off, and she calls out his breakdown in seeing "all the dominoes fall". Yo Gabba Gabba Donna is back to one set of glasses, and her presentation is good, but the whole dish is way too spicy. Manbun Nick was out of his element by not using a microwave, but overall does a good plate - and does another backflip. Lazy Latina Glenda's dish was off by using double prosciutto and underdone pork. Gospel Ty gets called out for throwing out the wrong part of asparagus and serving what appears to be scrambled eggs, but the pork is cooked well. Taylor Swift did well on all elements but poorly on knife cuts. Chanda wants to run away and take the chainsaw she used to cut her food with her. 

Time for eliminations! Ginni and Manbun Nick are the best on their teams this week. Taylor Swift, Yo Gabba Gabba Donna, Lazy Latina Glenda and Gospel Ty are also safe on Anne's red team. Lawrence, Sydney, Holgie, and Ernie are all safe for Tyler's blue team. 

Jeni and Rachel are at the bottom for Blue - fire versus trash. Jeni's going home - thank goodness, given her propensity for tossing trash all over the floor and leaving knives on the floor to slip on, fall on, or worse. Chanda and David are at the bottom for Red - and David is done. Anne hopes this is a good jumping off point for David, but given his reaction to a cut earlier I'm just hoping it isn't a jump off a bridge. 

Tune in next week for more disasters and facepalms.....

You Be The Judge...

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Is this just in my Teenage Dream(s), or did Last Friday Night include a lot of butter, y'all? Again... you be the judge.

...That Just Shouldn't Be Served!

Via: http://imgur.com/PRUOo

The kicker? Someone actually found this comment helpful. Huh?

Sounds almost right...

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I think my personal corollary to this one is "OMG...I really want to eat there!". That may be an offshoot of how hungry I am, though.

Burned!

Presented without any comment other than the one in the title...

HT:  C. Pitchford - Submitted to the I'm Nor Right In The Head group on Facebook by: T. Klosak

Oh, Baby....

Saw this on GraphJam the other day... It had made my day!


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Makes me think of the video I saw years ago with clips of Rachael Ray really enjoying her food (or at least looking like it) on $40 a Day. Whether you like or dislike Rachael, this video is a trip...

I told you...

 by a-sexy-robot on F*ck Yeah Guy Fieri

...that I was here to comment on Guy Fieri's (and Anne Burrell's) hair.

Don't they look like they were separated at birth or something?
Yeah, yeah... easy joke....

Rrrrowr...

I don't know if John Q. Foodblogger is Jon Eick's or Sam's doing, but this cartoon is a recurring series on the food blog So Good. I saw this highly-inappropriate cartoon sometime last week...

I don't know what the 'code' would be were the genders reversed:  Bobby Flay's "swagger"? Well...Kechara did report to me several recent references to Bobby Flay sans pants...

Let's George Takei's commentary on this one, shall we?

Oh, My....

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I can only imagine where things go from here. That poor unfortunate soul...