Massive Food Network star at any rate. Started off with Good Eats (which is a great show), I think, and exploded from there.
Though the bastard stole my phone once. Sure, he gave it back later, but still…
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I already had a mancrush on Alton Brown because of his (rather old, at this point) show Good Eats. Where he demonstrated what somebody with a background in videographic production and food science and cooking could do when given a camera and a kitchen.
Iron Chef America really gave him a platform to demonstrate his encyclopedic knowledge of the science and art of cooking and baking.
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We have a digital scale. I use it to weigh meat and estimate cooking and defrosting times. And I’ve used it to weigh out one-third package of rice pasta. For a lot of other things, I use measuring cups and go by volume; for example, 1.25 cups of water for 0.5 cup of red rice.
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The actual story cannot compare to the narrative that flashed through my mind when I first read this (it involved a cape and some special effects)… But you can’t leave me hanging!
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I was just walking on the sidewalk downtown with lots of other people around. Suddenly, this guy in a stereotypical bank robber outfit turns the corner ahead and runs by, grabbing people’s phones and bags and then runs around the other corner on the block.
Everyone was just standing around, looking stunned. “Was that Alton Brown,” we were all asking, as the costume did not hide his identity in the least.
Then he came racing around the original corner again, this time dressed in a superhero outfit, returning all the stolen items. With a wave and a flourish, he disappeared around the corner and we didn’t see him again. Just a really weird encounter.
And now that I have indulged your fantasy…
The real story
Not a big deal, really. My wife and I went to a book signing of his and he was having a Q&A beforehand. I was filming it on my camera, as were many other people there. My wife asked a question, something about other gluten free thickeners for gravy other than corn starch, as our kids are intolerant. She went on, saying how hard it was for us to find things they will and can eat because of their intolerances (older kid is gluten, soy, dairy, egg, and nut intolerant).
At this point he notices me with my phone and starts walking towards us, with a somewhat playfully evil smile on his face. “Is this your husband? What are you doing with that?”
“Um. Recording this for posterity?”
“Nope,” and he took my phone. A number of other phones got put away at that point. He gave it back later, saying I had suffered enough. It is an amusing story, though it definitely shocked me at the time.
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Interesting. I wondered if he feared giving what may have been misconstrued as medical advice (and the liability thereof) and was trying to play it off with a touch of charisma.
Either way, at least you got an interesting story out of it!
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Chapter 1: I think something’s up with my yeast.
I made crumpets with that excellent recipe. Probably could have left the mix to rise for another ten minutes cause my yeast is Old. Otherwise excellent. Much better than the last batch I made.
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Baker’s percentages are a common way of doing recipes, which lets them be scaled to the required quantities easily. Here is the formula for the cinimmon bread I plan on making tomorrow:
Ingredients Percentage
flour 100.00%
water 45.00%
milk 15.00%
honey 5.00%
egg 5.00%
butter 5.00%
salt 2.00%
idy 1.00%
The amount of flour used is set at 100%, and other ingredients adjusted to match. If I were using 1000 grams of flour, i’d use 450 grams of water and 150 of milk, 50 of honey, egg, butter, 20g of salt, and 10 g of yeast. The other, more complicated use is to figure out what quantities are required given a desired finished mass. I know, from experience, that I want 975 g of this dough to fill the pullman loaf pan I use for baking this in. you add up the percentages, getting 178. Then you divide the desired dough weight by that, getting 5.48. You mulitply the percentages of each ingredient by that number, and that gives you what’s required: 548 grams of flour, 246.6 grams of water, etc . You can then scale that to match the number loaves you want. (needless to say, if you do this a lot, you use a spreadsheet.)
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Currently have Beef & Broccoli in the slow-cooker, hoping it turns out well since I’m feeding others too 
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I was there and I remember it differently.
In the food Network world he’s pretty big. Not sure for non foodies. During the talk he announced the good eats reboot. He’s also been doing cooking videos with his wife from home on facebook. My fave recipe is his leek soup which I make annually.
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I might have heard the name, but I’m not sure.
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gasp
deep breath
dies
I love AB. He’s my favourite. If only he wasn’t a born-again conservative Christian, he’d be one of my favourite people alive (as it is, he’s a very good food reference guide but I can’t speak to him as a human other than to say he’s very entertaining).
His recipes are spectacular. Usually more involved, but always better than any comparison. His beef stew? Oh my gods. His turkey tamales recipe is unbelievable… we often cook turkey legs the same way he does in the recipe for tortillas because they are so damn good. I don’t think I’ve ever tried one of his recipes that wasn’t at least an 8.5/10, and his best work is stratospheric.
I own “Good Eats The Early Years” (a massive cookbook/diary), but I’m not allowed to open or read it until I become published.
Gosh. You got to meet him. Jelly, in case you couldn’t tell. Super jelly.
Back to the food! Cooking this time, not baking…
Last night I made lasagna, because I had 3 boxes of lasagna noodles that I’ve had for years and gosh darn it it was time.
Tomato sauce is 1kg beef, onion, garlic, mushrooms, 2 tins of tomatos, 1 tin tomato paste, water to thin, and spices (salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, etc…).
Cheese layer was 2 containers of ricotta (400g each, I think? There’s abouts), 2 eggs, 1 package of frozen spinach (thawed, d’uh), salt.
Layers were: tomato - pasta - tomato - pasta - cheese - pasta - tomato - pasta - cheese - pasta - tomato - pasta - tomato, and then a little mozzarella on top (not grated because ain’t nobody got time for that after everything else).
Upsides: This is the thickness of lasagna I’ve always wanted. My mom has a massive square roasting pan she used to make lasagna in, and it was one of the VERY FEW dishes she ever cooked that was edible (I love my mother, but she is an awful cook). Trickier to do in an oval pan, but it worked. Noodles weren’t overcooked, sauces were all delicious.
Downsides: Under-spiced since I’ve given up on parmesan almost entirely (too expensive, and now that I know it smells literally exactly like vomit I just can’t mentally get past that, despite it still being salty deliciousness). Should’ve added more salt to compensate, but that’s an easy post-cooking fix. Impossible to cut cleanly, due to using 2 different “styles” of lasagna noodles so they don’t line up perfectly… but most importantly…
I have exactly 5 lasagna noodles left. I’m just going to cook and cut them up at some point, because this is ridiculous.
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Final recipe of the previous week’s Blue Apron box:
This is actually more the sort of thing I would typically cook for myself. A skillet full of potatoes, carrots, onions, chickpeas. Sauced up with tomato chutney (I’d have used more tbh) and crushed tomatoes. Two eggs cracked over it, then a cilantro/fromage blanc sauce on top. Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t have thought to do egg or cilantro-cheese sauce. But they are good additions.
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Alas, I can no longer eat tomatoes; they boost stomach acidity, which I have problems with. When I make pasta I serve it with pesto. But my ability to eat Mexican, Italian, or Indian food in restaurants is limited . . .
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I used to struggle with this as well. Heartburn and ulcers like crazy. But, for me (and not necessarily everyone), this became less of an issue when I cut down on high-glycemic-index foods. In fact, ever since then, no ulcers and hardly ever have heartburn.
In other news, my partner and I have been ordering our groceries delivered for the last 2 months; early on it was a struggle to get certain items and so it became habit to just order things like milk, eggs and yogurt with every order because you never knew when you wouldn’t get it on your next order; and usually just stuff that had a short shelf life. But, also, because bananananananas are a favorite fruit around here for both me and my oldest daughter, and my partner likes to put them in her morning smoothies (even though she doesn’t like them which I won’t even go into right now), bananananananananananas were also something we just always ordered. And, if we don’t need something right away, we leave it on a shelf in the garage to “decontaminate.”
This morning when the newest batch of groceries arrived, so did a bunch of bananas. I then went and looked at what we already had, banana-wise… We literally had 30+ bananas because we just weren’t tracking the incoming and consumption rates.
So… long story short: I’m currently eating my 4th banana of the day.
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Today I made some Garlic–Butter-Naan, homemade Paneer (forgot to take a picture before drowning it in sauce) and a vegetarion version of Chicken Korma (soy-filets + paneer instead of chicken).
It was an above average meal tbh 
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Make banana bread!
Freeze it, eat it, turn it into french toast, mail it to friends, hang it from the rafters.
Cannot recommend turning it into french toast enough. It’s great. Although I haven’t done it since I was a student…
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French toast? I’m unfamiliar with turning bananas into French toast. We are planning to make 2-ingredient banana pancakes in the morning which sounds like it may be similar?
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“French Toast” is just one of many culture’s method of reclaiming waste-bread.
“Pain Perdue” in French (lit: Lost Bread). You take stale bread-product (literally anything breadlike… english muffins, banana bread, cinnamon loaf, sourdough, whatever), dip it in a custard, and then fry it.
Alton Brown, quelle surprise, has a spectacular French Toast recipe. It’s subtle enough to be best with plain bread, but honestly? It’s a great suggestion.
That stated, many other culture’s have equally delicious “lost bread” dishes, although most of them are a bit more selective. Italian “Bread Salad”, for example, doesn’t apply well to sweet breads, but “Bread Pudding” most certainly does (few things made me in happy in China as the realization that “Western Style” hotels across the country had all adopted converting yesterday’s unconsumed bread products into this morning’s bread pudding).
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As I parse @Fodder256’s post, his suggestion is to make the bananas into a large quantity of banana bread, and then make some of that into French toast.
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