Top Chef

News and links… and a contest!

And lastly, I am happy to announce an official Brûlée Blog contest!

The kind folks at Sobeys have offered to give one of my readers 1375 Club Sobeys points, which works out to approximately $10.00 in free groceries. Yes, I said free groceries!

Club Sobeys is Sobey’s free loyalty card where you can earn reward points through your purchases and redeem them for groceries, appliances, gift cards, and Aeroplan Miles. Since September 2008, more than 2.2 million Club Sobeys members have collected over 6 billion Club Sobeys points, and redeemed them for over $26,000,000 in free groceries. If you don’t already have a Club Sobeys card, you can sign up for a free one right over here. Please note that the points (and therefore also the contest) are only available to residents of Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Ok so how can you win these wonderful points? Simply follow any of these three options:

1. Post a comment here. And make sure to include your e-mail address in the e-mail address line so that I can tell Sobeys who the winner is! If you don’t want to post a comment, feel free to send me an e-mail instead at bruleeblog@{no-spamming}gmail.com (remove the stuff between and including the fancy brackets).

2. Talk about this contest on your blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and post a link to it here in an additional comment. No limits as to how many of these you do.

3. E-mail your friends and have them mention your name when they post their comment.

This contest closes at end of day May 7th.

Disclaimer: I have not been paid anything nor given anything to promote Club Sobeys.

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News and links

I know there’s lots of other things happening around town, but Sharon at Only Here for the Food already does such a great job of recording all that already. So instead today you get links that I stumble upon and find at least mildly interesting.

News and links

My last Vegas post is taking a while to write. So to tide you over, here’s some news and links.

Okay I lied, one more thing. I feel the need to complain about Food Network Canada‘s website and advertising. We all know the new fall season of tv shows are coming. They’ve even been advertising them in their commercials, but did you notice that they don’t give any dates? And they don’t have a feature on their website saying when shows start either. When I asked their Twitter account about it, I got back a reply that I should look at their daily schedule. And then they offered to tell me personally if there were specific ones I wanted to know about. Great for me, but sucks for everyone else wondering about what’s going on. Did you know that Top Chef 6 starts on Sept 7? Well I didn’t either, until I scoured the schedule.

Also, I got tired waiting to find out if they were going to broadcast Top Chef Masters, so I recently started watching it online. Am half way through the episodes, and loving it.

News and links

Top Chef – methinks she doth protest too much

So the claws are coming out after the Top Chef finale aired.

Casey wrote this oh so polite e-mail. Make sure to skim the comments to see fans arguing back and forth, someone quoting Carla’s graceful comments, and one of Casey’s friends trying to come to Casey’s defence. And apparently on Casey’s website she’s saying that the magazine reporter did not identify themselves as looking for a quote for publication.

Come on. You know this person is a writer. You should know there is no such thing as “off the record.” You should know e-mails, Facebook posts, etc. can live on FOREVER in today’s 24/7 Internet day and age. At very least, you should have immediately posted an apology for your words – words that probably should not have been written to your best friend, let alone an “acquaintance” as you claim the reporter to be.

More fan arguing can also be found at Chowhound, among other places.

Meow indeed.

Updated to add: The web site that posted the quote is defending themselves against her accusations.

Food news and links from around the ‘net

First, I’ve been listed on this site since Feb. 10th but kept forgetting to post about it:
Alltop. Bribes work.

Top Chef finale – it’s really hard to watch the person you’re cheering for shoot themselves in the foot. Grrr.

The U.S. Food Network is looking for 2-person Boston teams to compete in a new food reality show à la The Amazing Race.

Gordon Ramsay’s mini-me to appear on Hell’s Kitchen and the F-Word. (link contains the Little Gordon commercials if you haven’t seen them yet.)

Business Week on raw Camembert cheese war in France
(And makes me think of the farmer in Ontario and his legal court cases for selling raw milk.)

Top ten chefs of Ancient China (brings a whole new meaning to Top Chef)

Global craving crazes – Chinese food in India, Worcestershire sauce in Shanghai

Understanding deadly food allergies – how to avoid killing someone with your food

Is out-of-focus food photography a fad?

And now I can delete all those bookmarks I’ve saved. 🙂

Links galore and some thoughts on Top Chef

Top Chef – You know, at first I didn’t like Carla but she totally grew on me and I’m hoping she wins the whole thing. Glad Gail is back; Toby was irritating. And I totally thought the other person would get kicked out of the final, but I guess past performance was a factor.

Only Here for the Food has a great interview with Chef Rob Feenie.

The Downtown Business Association has posted their Downtown Dining Week info ahead of time (for once) , including menus. (Interesting that the information is only posted on their home page, and not on a separate Dining Week page. And there are no cross links to the info when you click on Dining or Events. Obviously they need some tutoring when it comes to marketing and the web. At least this time I didn’t have to e-mail them a week before the event and ask where the restaurant listings were.) Meals are $15/$25/$50 per person and run from March 6-15. On a few menus that I clicked on, lunches were generally $15 while dinners were all an astounding $50! Not much savings for the dinner choice. At least there’s a better choice of restaurants this time around. (Although I have to say, the Spaghetti Factory? Srsly?)

eggbeater has a post on vegan baking and substitutions.

Edmonton Journal interview with Mark Bittman and on eating less meat.

If you’re a fan of the Watchmen, you might be interested picking up some limited edition Nite Owl dark roast coffee.

And speaking of coffee, Starbucks has some interesting package design for their new instant coffee, the VIA Ready Brew.

Mark Bittman in the NY Times on breakfast alternatives.

Frank Bruni in the NY Times gave Susur Lee’s new restaurant Shang a single star rating (ratings are 0 to 5). Ouch. Other reviews have been mixed. Does this mean he should have stayed in Toronto?