It’s Not Beginning To Feel Anything Like Christmas

Seventy degrees and raining? Not Christmas weather in my opinion.

I Know I’m Not Reinventing The Wheel, But I Have A Question
Have you ever seen anyone use honey on pancakes/waffles instead of syrup?

The day before yesterday I finished off the maple syrup that I use when I microwave some pancakes for breakfast. While wandering the aisles of Publix yesterday seeking syrup I saw honey. It then dawned on me… “Honey on my pancakes, it’s just crazy enough to be good!”

Have you ever use honey on your pancakes?
Have you ever seen anyone else do this?

TweetUp + Thinking Man Tavern = Great Fun
Last night I got down to Decatur early enough to secure a decent parking space and eat dinner before the start of the Atlanta TweetUp. Eating is always a good thing…

I chose to play vegetarian for the day and went with the mango veggie burger with some potato rounds. The meal was delicious, but unfortunately for me I kept tasting it all night long.

The TweetUp was a smashing success. I’m not sure how many people came out to play, but when I last glanced at the sign in sheet there were about fifty names on it. Not bad for a rag-tag bunch of kids getting together to drink.

What surprised me greatly was the number of people who lived so close to Thinking Man Tavern. Early on it seemed as if my drive back to East Atlanta would be one of the longest! I’m sure that ratio changed throughout the evening…

And in the World’s Colliding world… early on I was discussing last week’s pub crawl and the guy next to me said, “Well, I can introduce you to some hashers.” Ha! It turns out that the people next to whom I was seated were the sister and brother-in-law of Slippery When Wet. Go figure.

ITP Flickr Pic
This is for all of the women whose minds I blew last night.
And Then Her Head Exploded

Top Chef: Throw The Book At Them
This is another incomplete recap of Top Chef because I couldn’t manage to keep my eyes open during the entire episode.

Let me start out by saying I cannot stand the amount of blatant product placement throughout Top Chef. It’s bad enough that they pimp the fuck out of Glad, GE, Toyota and Whole Foods, but now the interweave story lines in and pimp other products. Last night Hosea was finding out about the health of his father on some shitty T-Mobile Sidekick. I know this because they kept zooming in on the product name to make sure that I’d see it. Guess what cell phone provider and specific cell phone I’ll be avoiding when I switch soon…

As far as remember the QuickFire Challenge had something to do with Martha Stewart who was hold a book, most likely something she’s pimping. That’s when I fell asleep. When I awoke again nearly two hours later, Top Chef was in its second replay of the night on Bravo and I picked it up from there.

For the Elimination Challenge the cheftestants had to toil for someone’s Christmas charity party. I am constantly amazed how often this series turns into “Top Indentured Servant” or “Top Volunteer.” For last night’s episode each cheftestant had to create a hors d’oeuvres based around one of the twelve days of Christmas for the party.

As an aside: Certainly this episode was filmed months ago. How bizarre must it have been to pretend that it was Christmastime throughout the recording of this episode? Ahhh, the magic of television.

Last night we finally got a bit of (manufactured?) Top Chef drama. The cheftestants spent hours prepping their food and then storing it [redacted]-brand refrigerators. When they returned to the kitchen the next day they found out that one of the refrigerator doors was left ajar and that some of the prepped food was spoiled. In a normal restaurant the chef would probably serve it anyway, but these people are on tv so the pitch the spoiled proteins and all cheftestants kick in to help Rad and Hosea recreate their prep work. Somewhat surprisingly, these two dishes wind up being two of the top four dishes of the night.

The scoring for the Elimination Challenge was one of those popularity votes again, of course the judges had some input, but by and large the top four were chosen by people placing AIDS ribbons on placards corresponding to each cheftestant. Lame. In the end Hosea is selected a first place and is awarded a cook book from the night’s guest judge Michelle Bernstein (Bernstein on the Christmas show? Interesting choice.). His reward? Her new cookbook. And because his dish was recreated by all of the cheftestants they all got a copy of her cookbook. Maybe I should write a cookbook so that I can be on Top Chef.

Who would get ousted on this Holiday Extravaganza??? Well, Christmas came early and each chef was given a stay of execution as well as a stern warning from Daddy Tom Colicchio that their food was crap and that they need to step up their game.

Next week my girl Jamie prepares scallops… a-gain.

And now for some ideas stolen from LiveJournal…
Daily
Current Mood – can’t believe Christmas is seven days away…
Current Music – listening to Adam Curry’s “Daily Source Code” podcast
Website Of The Day – If you understand my fascination with gadgets then it should come as no surprise that I love Gizmine.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 8 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 18 (18)
Vegetarian Days – 10
Carnivorous Days – 7
Marta Rides – 0

Ongoing
Books To Read To Earn Kindle – 4

December Goals
1) Lose no fewer than two pounds
2) Drink no soda
3) Run no fewer than 50 miles
4) Completely read no fewer than one book
5) Write at least one program using Ruby on Rails

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]

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10 Responses to It’s Not Beginning To Feel Anything Like Christmas

  1. Martha says:

    I’ve seen plenty of folks eat honey on their pancakes/waffles…I don’t think it is that odd. Adding honey to the batter and then topping with a fruit compote is nice also. Do I see a new twist to the tweety bird waffle?

    I love this weather, I mean wish it wasn’t so damp but one of the reasons I left the north was the cold. This is great running weather. You know it is warmer here now, than it was in July when I visited Alaska…

  2. Barb says:

    I’ve never put honey on pancakes & waffles, but I bet it would be good. But, I don’t eat pancakes and waffles all that often.

  3. One week until Tweety Bird Waffles… Dear God I hope that the Tweety Bird Waffle maker survived the move!

  4. sal says:

    I have never put honey on pancakes but imagine it would be good. I have put butter and sugar so why not honey?

    Still full from my lunch yesterday at the Cherokee Country Club….might not have to eat for a few days…plus I stole some cookies….shhhh

    I, on the other hand, like it to be cold in the winter and I want snow for Christmas………….

  5. Martha says:

    I may have to make those bacon cookies, just to say I did. How early is too early to start ‘toasting’ the baby jesus???

    I am planning on making dinner for us…god knows we will need it.

  6. Beth says:

    Hey Paulie — a few teachers here at Decatur High School were complaining that there was some “event” at Thinking Man’s last night LOL – I guess that was your group! Evidently they went up there to grade final exams and the usual table was taken. Small world. We have a happy hour there every Friday afternoon and there’s a group of younger teachers that practically live there.

    Ya’ll need to stop talking about food on this blog. I can’t eat until 1:15 today because my students are taking finals and I’m TRAPPED!

  7. Too funny Beth. Another strange thing that happened to me last night was that I kept looking at one table of people who looked so familiar. However, I could never place the faces.

  8. Gentri says:

    Did you try and give them any of these lines?????? Bad Paulie!

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/12/18/reasons.you.wont.get.dumped/index.html

  9. Tasty Pie says:

    Yes, I often have honey because when I get to the maple syrup it’s usually already been destroyed by hubby and Sam. My topping of choice though is lemon juice squeezed over sugar, best on English style pancakes though as you can then roll them up make a tasty little package.

  10. Oooh, that’s an interesting concept Kay, I just might have to try lemon and sugar…

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