I been called outta retirement for one last job.  And that job is looking at this crazy game.  It looks like the answer to the question "what if Regular Show were real and you were playing a tabletop game inside of it?" and that is, well, awesome.

I voted from the hip for McCoy, because I remembered the time he slapped a pregnant woman while examining her.

Edit: If I'd thought about it more I probably would've gone for Bashir.  DS9's my favorite (because it's the West Wingiest Star Trek) and Bashir is pretty great.

River Song is [spoiler]Amy Pond's daughter[/spoiler] or the idea of [spoiler]Amy Pond having a kid[/spoiler] is being juxtaposed with an episode full of who-is-River-Songiness intentionally to provide theorist fodder.

Very good episode, the very last few seconds made everyone I was watching with laugh.  Too much time to parse each shot, should not have been in slow motion.

I've been thinking "treat it like any green vegetable," but I'm not sure of that approach.  Chinese food confuses me sometimes.  All my training tells me "DON'T let garlic take on colour, that shit get nasty" but I've had too many Chinese dishes with toasted garlic that were A-MA-ZING to follow that unquestioningly anymore.

Just made myself withdrawal-shakes level hungry for chili crab.

HELP!  I know BITTER MELON can be sliced thin and eaten raw or stir fried, and it goes with rich meats, and it looks like it'd be a pretty good marital aid, but does anyone know in greater detail what the incredible hell's usually done with this?

Please answer before whateverthehell Party of the Century is buries this post forever!  Posts other than Party of the Century are a metaphor for nearly all human endeavor: potentially meaningful but near instantaneously buried under the humongous, amalgamous message of the prevailing media.

I'm a lonesome billionaire operating nearly every member of these boards from a huge array of terminals in a hermetically sealed vault.

Right!  The Les Halles book o' cookery, as promised.  There's hardly a recipe in it I haven't made and found to be excellent.  It's not particularly vegetarian friendly, but one has to expect that going into anything written by Bourdain.  Great introduction to stockmaking and general prep at the start of the book, wonderful list of suppliers in the back.

I've just been thinking whipping stuff around might be involved.  Sugar shell full of cherry puree?  "Throw it at the plate as hard as you can for the authentic experience."

In the past I've done things inspired by movies for diners seriously into film.  Favorite ever was a group dish of fifty poached quail eggs with bacon, brunoise and a dab of hollandaise.  No man can eat fifty eggs Benedict!

Tonight was the first game inspired dish I ever made though, and it was based on Eversion.  It's a soup/stew served in a deep, narrow dish, so each element is covered by the one above it.  At the top, boiled peas and glazed carrots.  Very familiar.  Then you get into broth, a perfectly safe beef consomme.  Roasted shallots with a hint of star anise (aside from being tasty, it enhances meat flavors), then under that, braised beef heart.  Then a wide thin piece of pasta, and under that, like a kind of half-ravioli, sealed off from the broth, is an organrific filling.  Heart, kidney, lots of pepper, brown butter.  On the very bottom, snails in port sauce.  It gets weirder the deeper you go down!

And the best part: disturbing each element causes something new to happen to the broth, changing and thickening it.  The glaze on the carrots and shallots, the strong flavor of the heart, the ravioli turns it into a thick stew, and the port sauce from the snails turns it all dark red and gory.

I wish, I wish, I wish octopus worked with the other components so I could have the end of the dish be really, truly eversion-y, maybe move the red up into the ravioli in the form of some blood and make the sauce for the octopus ink-based, but it's already pretty busy and I just don't think I'd be able to get it to work.  Something this goofy has to be a great dish on top of all the cuteness, or I'm just being an asshole to the people eating it.

Anyway.  EVERSION: THE FOOD!  Shoulda followed it with an IWBTG dessert course.  Next time.

Loose whole leaf tea is worth the cash.  If you're making green or oolong, you can use the leaves a few times, sometimes with better results each time.

This comes from a... basically a tea textbook that a friend of mine has.  For temperatures:

White tea, Japanese green tea, and many new or spring green teas: 71-77c.
Green tea (standard): "Column of steam steadily rising" 77-82c.
Oolong tea: "Fish eyes" 82-93c.
Black tea: "String of pearls" 88-93c.
Pu-erh tea: "Turbulent waters" 93-100c.

The fish eyes/string of pearls/turbulent waters thing refers to what the bubbles look like if you haven't got a thermometer.  If you have one or care to buy one, use a digital thermometer.  There's a range, usually of 5-10 degrees, in which flavors are released, but bitter tannins are not.  It makes a HUGE difference.

For times:

Black tea: 3-5 minutes (one steeping only)
Oolong tea: 90 seconds to 2 minutes (several steepings)
Green tea: 2-3 minutes (several steepings)
Spring (or new) green tea:  90 seconds to 2 minutes (several steepings)
White tea:  90 seconds to 2 minutes (several steepings)
Pu-erh tea:  2-5 minutes (many steepings)

Don't think I've ever had a pu-erh tea.

It's worth googling around for ratios of tea to water, if it's not listed by the specific tea.  Generally, oolong takes about twice as much as other teas.  It might be what you're after, if you're looking for something with a strong flavor that works well with some sweetness.

My own favourite tea ever is lapsang souchong, which is a smoked black tea.