Had an interview yesterday. Woo! I would really like to get this job.

Food Network is scrubbing clean the one-star reviews of Sandra Lee’s recipes. Two of my reviews were deleted. Now, I can partly understand this. A lot of the reviews were mere bashing of Sandra and her recipes. These reviewers had never made the recipes and were just commenting on how horrible it looked. Conversely, many of the five-star reviews were over-the-top flattery of Sandra and bashing of the one-star reviewers. These people had also not made the recipes. Lots of name-calling from both sides. Food Network has deleted the one-stars and kept the five-stars, presumably to get the Semi-Homemade average up. Her show had the lowest average rating of the Food Network shows, generally around two or three stars for a given recipe.

I had written three reviews of recipes I made- the Raspberry Cooler, Mozzerella Nuggets, and Oriental Pork Wrappers. The Raspberry Cooler and Mozzerella Nuggets were both one-star reviews. The Oriental Pork Wrappers I gave a two. The two-star review has remained, the other two are gone (or rather were, since I rewrote them this afternoon). It’s incredibly annoying to me that they are only scrubbing half of the off-topic reviews as well as reviews from people who made the recipes and didn’t like them. It’s unfair to the writers (of the real reviews, not the flaming) and to the people who are going to be misled into making this crap.

Tried something from Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way today, just as an experiment. I bought three chickens from Costco, and after I was done separating them into carcasses and edible bits, I cut up the skin and fat and rendered them in a hot pan to get cracklings. Jacques had done this, and it looked really good. What a mess. Do not try that unless you have a spatter guard. Also, drain the fat when you’re done into a heatproof container. Don’t be a moron and put it into heat-sensitive plastic. That stuff melts FAST. And then you have hot fat everywhere. As for the cracklings themselves? Bland, bland, bland. And crunchy. Maybe I should have salted them before putting them in. Probably I should have. They ended up a little burnt as I left them in the pan while running around cleaning up the fat mess. Good times.

Yum, lemon curd. I think if I were to make this again, I would cook the lemon zest with the curd and then strain it out afterwards. It’s a little distracting to the smooth texture. I was so happy that it didn’t curdle. Really quite proud of that.

I did make scones a while ago, and they were excellent, but I just haven’t gotten around to copying down the recipe yet.

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