I was reading the comments in the blog linked to (with Bourdian's comments about Next Food Star) and someone mentioned that Sandra Lee is going to take recipes from the restraunts of Mario Batali and Bobby Flay and make them "semi homemade". While I can imagine the horrors that Sandra Lee will do to those recipes I can't imagine why they would agree to it, what kind of contracts they had to sign.

add Bourdain to the regular roster of judges, and give us two out of three: Tony, Gail, Ted. Right?!?!?

Yeah, I'm really not sure why Padma gets to be a judge. I can see why they need a pretty girl to be the host, but seriously, she's a model with her name on a few diet cookbooks written by other people. This makes her a qualified judge of restaurant chefs?

My Tivo didn't get the second NFNS ep and since I was in the hospital (with no FN on the in-room TV) I didn't realize it until they'd stopped running repeats. AND I can't ahem it because I got a very polite note from my cable company letting me know about a letter they recieved about my account from NBC...oh well.

But doesn't putting out a cookbook make you a top chef of your very own?

I don't know, I like Padma. She's pretty cool, and a huge improvement over first season hostwoman. But excepting the occasions when she gets a little feisty, she's kind of useless as a judge.

Yeah, as irrelevant as Padma seems, she's still a damn sight better than the poorly constructed fembot they had first season. Still, I think Jess is right. Padma should just be hostess.

I'm glad to see the rumor about no more walkthroughs was spurious. And I like that Chef Tom is still doing them. He gives the greatest expressions when he thinks a recipe is dubious.

Though I would like to see more of Lee Anne, so having her take up a "mentor" position would be cool. Though I do understand the reasoning I've seen in Chef Tom's blog about how it's very difficult to change course once you've started preparing a dish, hence no mentor role on TC.

add Bourdain to the regular roster of judges, and give us two out of three: Tony, Gail, Ted. Right?!?!?

seriously. He was an absolute delight. I would love to see Ramsay as a judge as well, but it ain't gonna happen.

Give me Bourdain and Ted for sure. Padma is worthless.

Also, is it no longer the Kenmore Kitchen TM??

People that are more observant than me said that it looked like the appliances are now GE or something and not the old Kenmore Craptastic.

We need to start our own ghost hunting team.

I'm in! I've always wanted to do this! We could "do' the house I grew up in, too. The Ghosts Hunters team is based in NJ, isn't it? Every time I see that show, I think about going and volunteering.

"Bourdain"--it sounds like it should be the name of a hard boiled detective series. I love the fact he's ever only referred to by his last name. I have a hard time remembering the Anthony.

I believe they are actually in Rhode Island.