I know I need to expand my horizons. I know it. Chili's, Lupe Tortilla's and Olive Garden need to cease being restaurants that I look forward to eating at on the weekends. It's not like I haven't eaten at plenty of Top Cheffy restaurants. I have, especially since my sister became a fancy eater. She only eats organic, free-range things and when I go out to eat with her, we rub elbows with the sophisticated people of the world. (Next time I'm at one of those places, I'm going to tell them I bought camembert cheese once.) When the menu comes, though, I frantically comb it for something recognizable. Something normal. Something normal with a twist.
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But, there are some things I just won't eat.
All of those things are alive and well on Top Chef. Well, not alive. Thank goodness. (That will probably be on next week's episode. Cooking with living animals.)
How about you? Do you eat these??
#1 Frog legs: Brooke's version of "Surf & Turf" (which totally takes me back to Steak 'n Ale in 1985) included frog legs and mussels. I have never, ever eaten a frog leg and I just don't think I will. Why would I order frog legs when there is chicken on the menu, especially if you tell me frog legs taste like chicken?
#2 Mussels: See above. I'm pretty sure I've had mussels in something before, but if you walked up to me and said, "Hey, want to eat a mussel?", I would decline. I would decline and ask you where I might be able to find a Chick-Fil-A.
#3 Anchovy acciughe: Huh? Lizzie made this for her dish presented to the patrons of QSine- the restaurant on the cruise. Okay, so "acciughe" actually means "anchovy" in Italian. Well, anyway, I don't want to eat it. We once ordered a Caesar salad that was made tableside. That waitress chopchopchopchopchopped up some anchovies into the salad and I ate that, so no need to look at me like I'm some type of unsophisticated peasant. (While we are on the subject of Lizzie, I don't appreciate that the camera crew showed her butchering a pig. Have they no concern for my well-being? A pig just about decapitated on national television. Unbelievable. Brought me back to 8th grade Biology when I had to dissect a pig. For weeks. The same pig. Okay, I'm going to need to get Pepto-Bismol in an IV STAT.)
#4: Iceberg lettuce: Just kidding. I love iceberg lettuce! When I make a salad at home, I will often combine iceberg lettuce with other lettuce. I will eat it in tacos. I will eat it on a hamburger. I will eat it at P.F. Chang's for a lettuce wrap. I will eat it in a boat. I will eat it with a goat. I will eat it in a house. I will eat it with a mouse. I can't say the same for Sheldon. During the Quickfire Challenge, they were asked to make a dish with iceberg lettuce. They all laughed like they were kings and queens or something! Kings and queens, I tell you! Sheldon said it is the most boring lettuce that makes a lame salad and a pathetic taco filling. Well, well, well. Excuse us over here asking for another salad refill at Olive Garden, Mr. Fancy Pants! (Sheldon, by the way, ending up winning that challenge.)
#5 Hot iceberg lettuce: Not kidding with that one. Curtis Stone (hello!), who was the guest Quickfire judge last night, said that lettuce can be cooked. Stefan actually cooked the lettuce for his dish. If you came up to me and said, "Hey, want to try some cooked lettuce?", I would say "What's that?" and then run off. And then trip. I always trip.
#6: Chicken hearts: During Last Chance Kitchen, Kristen and Stefan had to make a dish with an organ or combination of organs. ORGANS. ORGANS. ORGANS. Gross. Honestly, though, Kristen made chicken hearts, pan fried it and served it with some salad and fruit. I might eat that if I went to a restaurant and there was ONE thing on the menu: CHICKEN HEARTS. Okay, no, I would actually leave and go across the street to Pei Wei.
#7 Cow tongue: Stefan made "Beuscherl of Innards with Cream Sauce, Bread Galette, Liver, and Parsley Salad". Did you see the word "innards"? He said he was going to make the broth with cow tongue. No, no, no, no, no way, Jose. Not this lady.
#8 Chicken liver: See above. Innards. Organs. Not happening. Also, that'll be enough of the words "pork belly". Stefan made his dish during the Elimination Challenge with pork belly and made it very, very, very, teeth-shattering crunchy. Crunchy pork belly. Ick. My husband likes to eat Fried Pork Skins and I like to run really fast in the other direction.
#9 Tripe: See above again. Not it!
#10 Menudo: This is a hot item here in Texas and I'm not talking about Ricky Martin's Spanish singing boy band, mijo. Talking about comida here, gente. Lots of menudo is being stirred over stoves all across the Texas landscape. Not. Happening. Mamacita. It is made with beef STOMACH. (Where's my Pepto Bismol?)
How about you? Would you eat all of these things??
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Save-A-Chef
The battle is now between Stefan and CJ, since Kristen beat Stefan in Last Chance Kitchen. Which one do you think should stay around and possibly win the whole competition?
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| Image from here. (My modifications.) |
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42 comments:
There are not many restaurants here that aren't chains. I think there is ONE. And that one is more of bar. So there's not much variety. There's a Top Chef-y restaurant about a half hour away and that's where Hubs takes me for special occasions and I die over the food. I will pretty much try anything. :)
I think CJ will probably win over Stefan. Last I looked, CJ had 96% of the vote over Josie. And even though I think that's a rare case b/c Josie is obnoxious- I still think that means that CJ's voters are out in full force and not even the adorable Stefan can oust him. I was hoping Stefan would win LCK last night and stay in that way and have CJ stay in with the twitter save. I'm more of a Stefan fan. B/c I think it would be fun to go to his restaurant and flirt with him while CJ wouldn't be as much fun. Hey, since I can't actually taste the food, I have to go by something.
And yes, I do have a Top Chef addiction. LMAO
I'm with you on all of the above. I tried escargot once. It wasn't awful because it was covered with butter and garlic, and how can you go wrong with butter and garlic? It just wasn't good enough to make up for the fact that it was a snail.
YES!! Iceberg lettuce is OK but romaine is better. Frog's legs & mussels--yummy! Anchovies are OK because I like salty. Chicken (& turkey) hearts get chopped up with other organs & go into giblet gravy. LOVE Jewish chopped (chicken) liver! When we couldn't afford other beef, my mom would roast a cow's tongue & slice it. Haven't tried (yet) hot lettuce, tripe or menudo. And I like my meat blood rare. You people are cowards & are missing a lot of good stuff!!
If I had to make a list of what I wouldn't eat, this would be it. Word. For. Word.
Word for word, huh? I knew I liked you! :)
Romain IS better, but I've eaten plenty of iceberg lettuce and loved it. You really like frog legs?? Do you fry them? Giblet gravy?? I have heard of it, but GIBLETS? I do need to expand my horizons. Maybe. :) If the chopped liver tastes like it would be liver, I couldn't handle it. Just couldn't. So, cow tongue is much cheaper, huh? I guess if you covered that with enough gravy, it would taste okay? Hot lettuce was a new one for me. Never knew people ate that. I guess I'm not surprised you like your meat rare. You are adventurous!
I'd be all "That things need to escargot home." I know it's stupid. But, escargot? Ick.
I AM impressed, though. :)
I am very interested to see how Stefan stacks up against CJ. I think CJ has had a good run, but Stefan may give him a bit of a challenge. I don't know. I think Stefan is so funny, but he can also be pretty crude. (Remember him saying he'd like to give Padma something warm to put in her mouth last night??) He was also rude during Restaurant Wars. People may hold all of that against him. We'll see! I LOVE that you love Top Chef so much. I never knew! I am also glad that you are catching the posts on Google Plus. It is a great place to link to after all!
My husband's humor is much like that- he can make anything seem dirty. And he makes me laugh- so Stefan does, too. I do think it will be much closer between him and CJ than between CJ and Josie. But I still think it will be CJ who takes it.
When I was blogging celeb gossip on babble, my favorite posts of the week to write were the Top Chef recaps. That was during All-Stars and I have to admit, I based most of my predictions on which chef I had the biggest crush on.
Anything with the word "liver, kidney or tongue" in it is pretty much a no-go for me.
I've never made them myself, but frog's legs ARE fried. I was reminded of an old joke: A guy goes into a restaurant & asks the waiter what the day's special is. When he's told it's roast tongue, he cringes & says, "I'd never eat anything that came out of an animal's mouth--just scramble me a couple of eggs!" Think about it...
Me, too! Meeeeeeeeeeee, too.
I honestly stopped the DVR and rewinded it several times just to hear Stefan's comments. He cracked me up. I like his humor. I think he was the funniest chef, by far! I didn't realize you wrote for Babble and wrote on Top Chef. I wish I had been following this show all along! You are probably right about CJ and Stefan. CJ wants it REALLY bad. He was majorly bummed to have been beaten by Kristen. I wondered if Kristen's food was really better or if Tom just wanted to help her get back in the game after falling on her sword. She IS an awesome cook, though. When it comes to Last Chance Kitchen, I think it is about the food AND favoritism. At least a little.
He has a lot of personality. And when we can't taste the food, that goes a long way. That and how cute he is.
That was two years ago that I was doing that. After 8 months of celeb blogging, my head almost exploded because I really couldn't care less who was pregnant and who looked pregnant and what people were wearing on the red carpet and all that jazz. If I could have just blogged reality tv stuff, I would have been in heaven. But since it had to include it all, 8 months was enough and I quit. I haven't been able to watch an awards show since. LMAO
For sure on LCK. It's whoever Tom wants. Unless someone seriously screws up and it's obvious even to those of us who can't taste the food who the winner should be.
Oh, Hey-seuss. "You had sweet;you had salty"
"You could make a two-biter, I suppose."
This is like the most double-entendrish of all of them.
I have eaten frog legs, but only so I can say I have eaten them. Given a choice, I will not be eating them again. Not because they taste bad, but because I have problems eating things that still resemble the animal from which it came. When Lizzie butchered that pig, I looked away and put my fingers in my ears. I will not eat anchovies for the same reason although I will eat the hell out of a Caesar salad. But an unsmushed up anchovy? Those things have little bones sticking all out of them like hairs and I'm just supposed to crunch those little bastards up? No, thank you. No organs either, especially liver. The liver is the trash can of the body, for god's sake.
I will agree with the Top Chefs on one thing: I, too, am a lettuce snob. I'd just as soon eat a piece of damp copy paper as a piece of iceberg lettuce.
I have no opinion on who will win, but my husband could tell you and he would be right. He's fairly obsessed with all cooking competition shows. Also Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, and yes, I am concerned.
I'm with you on every one of those! No way!
Not your thing, either, huh, Eva? I bet lots of people eat weird seafood stuff up in Maine!
omg, i could live on chicken livers. is that gross of me? but i'm not familiar with #3 or #10, so not sure if that means i want to try them immediately, or never...
So, the fried frog leg still looks like frog legs? Yeah, NO THANKS. It is impressive that you ate them to say you ate them. It WAS really disturbing to see Lizzie with that pig, right? Disgusting! I couldn't be a chef for that one reason. The butchering. The anchovies have bones and HAIR-LIKE things in them? Yuck, yuck, yuck. You are so right about liver. At least cows aren't alcoholics.
As for lettuce, I know iceberg is the bottom of the heap. I just like the crunchiness, so I like to add it with other lettuces. I do like to eat it with cucumbers and tomatoes. I like a crunchy salad. I don't like feeling like I'm eating the weeds in my yard.
I hope your husband will stop by here tomorrow! I am starting a contest and I would LOVE to have his two cents. Yours, too! I just got into Top Chef this season and I am so glad I did. It has been more fun than I thought it would be. As for Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, I haven't seen either. I need to set my DVR, don't I??
You are so right!! I'm just getting the "hey-seuss". Ha!! Love that.
So, there really is no other way to cook them? Love that old joke. I get it! :)
You're right about the personality helping out because we can't taste the food. As for the celebrity thing, I got a subscription to Us for Christmas. I can't keep up! Every week more stuff comes in, more dresses, more break-ups... It is making me crazy! I could see how there comes a point where you are just over it. I like awards shows, but I ALWAYS forget to watch them or set my DVR. Also, I'm glad to know about this LCK thing. It was pretty obvious to me after watching a couple, but I was really thinking at the outset that the best dish would win. I guess that happens sometimes, but...it's Tom's favorite that wins out- food or person.
(By the way, I love this new commenting system. I just had it installed a couple of weeks ago. Never really had this capability before. So beats the regular Blogger comments.)
For real??? You live on them? I have never had them, so maybe I shouldn't speak so quickly. Did you grow up eating them? Do you use one particular recipe? I feel like a chicken liver must be so tiny. Why the liver? Why not just eat the breast? So many questions...
Some of these I've tried. Some I cringe at the very thought. One I see missing from your list is Balut... a filipino delicacy http://icekrambol.com/tag/ducks-egg/ Yeah. No.
You are so right! I left that off the list and that was a major mistake. I actually wrote a post about balut a week ago. http://www.kelleysbreakroomblog.com/2013/01/my-take-on-top-chef-seattle-restaurant.html THAT is ABSOLUTELY the MOST DISGUSTING thing EVER, EVER, EVER. Balut should have been #1. What was I thinking??
Not like me to miss a Kelley post. I must have known it was about Balut. Which is ABSOLUTELY the MOST DISGUSTING thing EVER, EVER, EVER that is actually considered a FOOD. Not sure I could go there even under the threat of death.
Ha! Hold on, MILF Runner, what is the name of your blog? Is it MILF runner? Yeah, balut is horrifying. I have heard the worst thing about it is the crunchiness of it. The bones. The shell. AHHHHH!!!! Under threat of death, I don't know if I could either. People actually desire to eat one! How can this be??
LOL. Yes http://milfrunner.com It's a new blog. It is the crunching that would skeeve me. I would hear the unborn chick cheeping with every *kEErunch".
Okay - so what's #4 really. I'm
I would try anything on your list, just because I'm weird.
Ha! Okay, it would have to be balut. http://www.kelleysbreakroomblog.com/2013/01/my-take-on-top-chef-seattle-restaurant.html I talked about it with MILF Runner in the comment below. Absolutely disgusting!!
You are so brave! I would never, ever bite into cow tongue. I would vomit immediately, I just know it!
I don't see your comment popping up here, but I do see it on my dashboard. Anyway, thanks so much for saying you don't like missing my posts! I am glad to "meet" you and I will check out your blog soon! Maybe you could leave a link to a post you love?
It will be Kristen who wins bc the Judges favor her but I am hoping it will be CJ
Kirby! I don't see that you have entered the "Guess Who Will Win Top Chef!" Contest. You have to! It just won't be the same without you. :) One lucky guesser gets $100. http://tiny.cc/8f4vrw
I'm with you on everything, except the mussels. I just love them, all seafood in fact...but the rest of the list...YUCKY!
I just can't the way mussels are served. They're all connected in their shells, right? How do you eat them?
I forgot to tell you that I love grilled endive and radicchio. Cut it in half, brush with oil and season, then grill it cut-side down. Yum. But, somehow hot iceberg lettuce sounds so wrong.
I have eaten both mussels and cow tongue-- in fact I have purposely orderd Tacos de lengua many times-- they are actually good. A bit more of a smooth texture than most meat but tasty :)
You just kind of suck them out of the shell and they come right out :)
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