You Have To Know When To Fold Them

My commute home took me right past Manuel’s Tavern but I decided not to stop and join the TweetUp. I just wasn’t in the mood to socialize, and wanted to head home to cook some of the food I purchased the other day in order to stay on my Eat/Drink for $30/Week course. From all of the tweets I’ve seen from participants it appears that a good time was had by many and that some people received free t-shirts. It’s a good thing I don’t need any more t-shirts. 😉

ITP Flickr Pic
Given this week’s Seven Day Project it should come as no surprise that my shots this week center on food.

What should come as a surprise is that I am cooking at home even though the plumbing is still in limbo; makes life a little more challenging.

Tonight May Be A Trivia Night
Before agreeing to play the $30/Week game I agreed to join Meet The Hashers for Team Trivia at Raging Burrito. I guess I’ll be eating chips and salsa for dinner?

Top Chef : Dance With The Man Who Brung Ya
And another Top Chef is in the record books. This season seemed to fly by, and I can’t believe that an entire season has passed since watching Richard Blais compete in the last finale. [that’s called “foreshadowing,” kids]

We return to The Big Easy for the head-to-head-to-head competition between Hosea, Stefan, and Carla. Tonight’s competition is “simple,” cook the best three-course meal of your life and win the title of Top Chef. Since we’ve already seen a return of this season’s losers, bring on people who failed to take the title in previous seasons.. [enter Marcel, Casey, and Richard]. Knives were drawn and teams were formed.

– Hosea and Richard
– Stefan and Marcel
– Carla and Casey

The teams spent the night prepping their meals to get ready to cook at the world-famous Commander’s Palace for the competition. When faced with a Top Chef finale you should remember the following two rules

1. Don’t be bland, cook with bold flavors
2. Cook the food you know

To break either of those rules is to risk losing Top Chef even if you’ve proven yourself as the best cheftestant all season.

As the cheftestants entered Commander’s Palace they were confronted with the day’s twist. No, they weren’t going to have to cook solo, they were going to have to create an appetizer based on one of three local ingredients — crab, red fish, alligator. In order to decide who would pick their ingredient and then assign the other two, the cheftestants ate King Cake until one of them found the baby (HAHAHAHA!). Hosea found the baby, chose red fish, assigned the crab to Carla, and strategically assigned the alligator to Stefan.

Each chef team began the cooking…

Hosea chose to make a menu sans dessert because he wanted to cook what he knew and not leaving a lacking dessert as a lasting impression = SMART
Carla, decided to listen to Casey’s suggestion to souvee the meat and later to create a souffle for dessert. Neither of these techniques are Carla’s strengths = DUMB
Stefan used an unconventional method of freezing carpacchio and then made a really strange, lackluster dessert = DUMB

Want to take a stab at who won?

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – okay, although I want my eyes to return to their normal state
Current Music – listening to C|Net’s “Buzz Out Loud” podcast
Website Of The Day – I still don’t have a Kindle2 (nor one on order) but I am still interested in eBooks. Check out Bookworm if you are too.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing

Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0 miles, Wheel Mileage – 0 miles
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 26 (26)
Vegetarian Days – 1, Carnivorous Days – 25
Marta Rides – 0

February Goals
– Complete all necessary work on my bed room
– Lose no fewer than one pound
– Run no fewer than 30 miles
– Completely read Softbox Lighting Techniques for Professional Photographers, and Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas

2009 Goals
– Reduce my weight to 190 pounds (today’s weight was 199.5 pounds)
– Completely read the book 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
РEarn at least $150 through photography sales in order to cover the cost for the renewal of the Jalape̱o Beach SmugMug account I opened the other day.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop

The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C (iPhone development) and Ruby on Rails (Black Sheep web page concept)
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]