If you’ve been keeping up with Food Network Star, you’ll know it now has a new format. Now, it’s down to three different teams. Team Alton, Team Giada, and Team Bobby. Each team has finalists who were hand-picked by Alton Brown, Giada De Laurentiis, and Bobby Flay. After watching the first episode, I have to admit that I’m not sure of anyone. I believe, however, Michele Ragussis of Team Bobby has the best chances. I’m not sure, but there’s just a feeling I have. Of course, in the past, I’ve been quite wrong. But I feel pretty good about it. She was also on the show Chopped, although I’m not sure if she won or not.

I’m hoping to do a weekly synopsis on the show, and I do promise to give readers full notice if I am going to give spoilers. We’ll see in the upcoming weeks if I my predictions will come true. Do you have your own favorite? Who is it?

I got the Paula Deen Porcelain Cookware Set as a gift from Meesh recently, and I think I’ve had it long enough (about 4 months) to have a good review.

To begin, I really love this set. It’s your typical non stick cookware, and it works great. However, the design could have been better. On one hand, I like how the pots curve inwards. That’s a pretty cool design so your stuff doesn’t spill out of it as easy. That being said, pouring anything out of these pans usually involves a lot of spilling and doesn’t always go so well.

Everyone know how much I love my ramen. When I make it, I still use my old pot because 1) It’s just the right size, unlike the smallest pot, which is too small, and the medium pot which is too big and 2) I don’t spill ramen everywhere when I pour it into the ramen bowl. The size issue, I can get over. That’s my bad for not thinking of the sizes. The spilling I can get over as well, but really, I think they could have just went ahead with the straight sides. But again, that’s my bad for not noticing that the sides are curved inwards. Then again, the pictures on the Amazon do not reflect what I actually received. This is a very typical issue.

I’ve used the largest pot many times and I love the how the tops really make a seal. I’ve already made chili many times and haven’t had any issues with heating, sticking, or cleaning. Even though these pots should not be cleaned in the dishwasher, they will withstand heat from the oven with a maximum temperature of 350 degrees. Typical for non stick ware.

The non stick surfaces are still working great, and I’ve washed them plenty and show no signs of chipping or wear. Of course, I’ve been taking care of these by not using metal utensils and not washing them in a dishwasher.

Surprisingly enough, the included spatula and slotted spoon have actually been used, and the spatula has been used quite a bit. I love it. The angle of the spatula seems just about right and it’s very easy to clean. This surprised me the most.

All in all, I’m not sure if I would recommend this for anyone looking to get a high-end cookware set. If money was an object, then this set is definitely worth the price. I would still give this cookware set a 4 out of 5 stars however.

Comments are welcome!

It’s almost unbelievable that they are planning on making cuts to the Farm Bill and Food Stamp program, but it’s good to know that there are celebrities who would use their influence to help out the hungry.

So, while walking through Costco the other day, Meesh and I spied a Sodastream. I’ve seen it many times before, and this past weekend, we had seen the commercial on TV. We thought about it for a second and I said, “let’s get it!” and so we bought it! Of course, I’m a sucker for marketing. We purchased it for $99 plus tax, a bit over priced most likely, but it was there and convenient.

We didn’t use it at first after returning home, because we had so much going on at the time, but it was definitely in the back of my mind. I set it up later, and I have to admit, with no cords, no power, it was refreshing. It’s one way of going “green” according to the packaging contents. The CO2 container was very easy to hook up. At first, it was confusing only because the size of the CO2 container was a bit different from the diagram. (It was shorter.) Plus, I’m a dork anyways, and I never really read the instructions very well.

After that, it was just a matter of cleaning the bottles, filling them with water, and voila! We now have carbonated water, with 12 samples! Again, making the carbonation was so easy. Just press the button after screwing in the bottle of water. I want to warn people and the bottle will LOOK like it’s not carbonated, but it is! Once you release the bottle, it will fizz out as air goes into the bottle. Then you will definitely see that it is carbonated. So don’t pump it for about 10 to 15 times like me and find out the hard way that it’s carbonated! It didn’t explode on me but it tasted very horrible.

Now, you add the flavoring. Because the carbonation was horrible in my first bottle, I totally wasted the diet Lemon-Lime. It’s very easy to insert the flavoring though. You simply tilt the bottle and SLOWLY pour in the flavoring. If you don’t do it slowly, it will just fizz out everywhere like a shaken soda. Yes, again, I found out the hard way. But this is how you learn. Of course, I might have avoided the accident if I actually read the instructions. (Instructions? Bah!)

All in all, the Sodastream is a great product in my opinion. I like the taste, and although it’s not quite like the soda’s I normally drink (diet Pepsi mainly), they are really good. I totally recommend these flavors (for now, more might come as I taste them): Diet Lemon-Lime, Diet Cream Soda, Diet Root Beer, Diet Cranberry/raspberry, and Diet Ginger Ale.

Robert Irvine of Restaurant Impossible and numerous other shows had a surprise wedding for Gail Kim. Needless to say a big surprise!

I’ve had the pleasure (and dis-pleasure) of using a variety of recipe programs. I loved most of them, and while one of my favorites still continues to be MacGourmet, I have to admit that Pepperplate has really caught my eye.

Why do I love Pepperplate? Well the first thing to come to mind is that I can use it on my iPhone, my Android tablet, and my computer. If I had a functional Android phone, of course it’s also available there.

The second thing that might come to mind is the awesome import ability. When you use this “app” on the web, you can import a lot of recipes into it from most popular recipe sites such as FoodNetwork.com, AllRecipes.com, and so on. You can even put a bookmarklet into your browser to “Add to Pepperplate” to make it even easier to import into it.

What more could there be, right? Is there a third thing? Of course there is. You can do meal planning as well! You can plan special meals, dinners, routine meals, and then put them into action with the planner.

BTW, these are all functions that are on the website only at this time. On the Android and iOS devices, you are a little limited in functionality. But it gives you enough functionality to make it useful.

But wait, there’s more! You can also set up shopping lists just in case you want to go to the store to buy what’s needed! This is where the mobile devices come in really handy. Let’s not forget that on the tablet, this is an easy way to display the recipe while in the kitchen. (In the event you don’t have a laptop to bring into your kitchen.)

All in all, I think Pepperplate may be my newest craze in the app world. I think I won’t even give this app a score. I would label this app an “I can’t live without it” app.

Yoshi answers an awkward diner when they ask how to sympathize with Japan while eating sushi. Really.

Do you slurp when you eat ramen? Take this poll that Yoshi made to see if you slurp while eating ramen!

For a long time, I was on the hunt for the perfect recipe manager for my Mac. I had a lot of loose index cards that my mom gave me and needed a digital copy of the recipes before I managed to accidentally catch the paper copies on fire while cooking (stranger things have happened). I had gone through the free trials of a few different programs with various success.

I started with SousChef and created all my recipe files in there. It was a pretty decent program with some neat features, but the “import” option was lacking and it was just a little quirkier than I cared for.

Next up was MacGourmet, which was the same price but had a more professional feel to it. It was able to import my SousChef files right out of the box, which was awesome. I liked a lot of the tools that it had, but I was really irked by the fact that many of the better features were separate addons that had to be purchased separately. Overall, it felt too expensive for what it was.

Then, one day I was browsing the App Store, and came across YummySoup! on there. The first thing that caught my eye was that it had all the same major features as the other programs I tried, but was only half the price. I’m always up for saving a few dollars, so I grabbed the trial version. It was pretty much love at first sight, but with a small rocky start.

Sadly, it wasn’t a one-click import from MacGourmet (since I had added more recipes while using it), but it was still pretty easy. I may have just done it wrong, maybe it was supposed to be one-click. In the end, I got all my recipes in there with very minimal fuss, and that’s really all that mattered to me.

It was pretty smooth sailing from there, though. The first thing I was asked was which template I wanted to use for my recipes. I, of course, picked the grey-and-pink one!

One of the first things I loved was the visual browse-by-photo bar on the top. It’s a clever way to see the visual of your options, without being intrusive. But, if you’d rather just see a list, that’s an option, too.

The category system is a lot easier to use for me, too. The drag-and-drop works great and it comes with some preloaded options. You can control what categories appear without losing tags, so you can use as many tags as you want without having the Groups section be cluttered. It’s also got smart filtering!

I was really impressed by the recipe importer, though. It can automatically import with one click from a number of large recipe sites, such as All Recipes, Epicurious, and Food Network. The highlighting import method works really well with any online recipe though, including quickly grabbing the delicious looking photo that goes with it.

The coolest thing though, that I didn’t see in either of the other programs, was the special print options. The print engine can give you either a full page, or a standard 4×6 inch index card. Each template comes with a “low-ink” format and a “photo” format, depending on how fancy you want to print your cards. I’m really excited to print out all my recipes to little cards and put them in a binder to keep in my kitchen!

There’s a couple things that can be improved, but nothing major. Overall it’s a fantastic program! I just took a peek and it looks like the price has gone up a few dollars, but in my opinion it’s still well worth the cost (which is still a few bucks cheaper than the others). I heart YummySoup!

Wow, what is up with some people out there? In this article, a gentleman decides to open fire on a manager because the price for the Beefy Crunch Burrito went to 1.49 from 99 cents. Really? You’re gonna fire a BB gun at someone and get arrested for it over 50 cents? What’s up with people?

The next story in that article, I can understand. How in the world do you get a whole frog from a can of green beans? This goes to show that you should definitely buy fresh all the time. A lot of people will complain that the costs are crazy to buy fresh vegetables. But you know, it’s really worth it. You don’t really know what they’re putting into canned foods really, and that’s a very good example.