SYTYCD-- I loved Janine's solo last night the end when she slowly turned and ended was just amazing. I'm worried all the (deserved) criticism of Evan will have people voting for him.

TCM - I'm watching this for the first time (although I've got the dvr set for past episodes) and I could have come up with a better dessert. And I'm surprised the gluten intolerante person didn't know about pasta besides wheat, I mean I know about them just from looking at the shelves, but I guess if you don't go down that aisle. But Vegetarian Times did a feature on gluten free a few months ago and featured pasta made from corn so there must be other ways to get info if you are gluten free.

As for the dessert, I wasn't sure what the season was and what they had to work with. But I was thinking he could have gone with something like a grilled pineapple with a glaze of brown sugar, rum, some smart balance. If he cut the pineapple through the top and kept the leaves on, then sort of filleted the pineapple off the rind, left that whole, skewered the pineapple, grilled it and glazed it, then laid it back on the rind, so it looked whole (does that make sense) and served it with -- maybe a tropical fruit salsa. Not a traditional dessert.

With the strawberries,maybe a crumble thing, where he cooked the strawberries and put some chopped nuts mixed with margarine and butter in ramekins and cooked it a bit.

Or! I don't know poach a whole pears in wine, make a sauce, make some brittle.

Of course it's easy to say that when I have the luxury of thinking this up without freaking out over the restrictions.

I think Art said it was spring when he talked about the dessert.

I don't know a lot about veganism, but the idea that you don't eat eggs suprises me. I mean, the chickens lay them anyway. Is there some objection to how chickens are raised and forced to lay? What about free-range chickens? which I bring up since Hil mentioned how many eggs would have been in a flourless chocolate torte.

I was thinking of other fruit desserts, too, askye, like a crumble with granola or something. Or just straight up chocolate of some kind, or chocolate-dipped fruit.

I think Art said it was spring when he talked about the dessert.

I think Keller also said it was spring. That would make sense with the strawberries.

I don't know a lot about veganism, but the idea that you don't eat eggs suprises me. I mean, the chickens lay them anyway. Is there some objection to how chickens are raised and forced to lay? What about free-range chickens? which I bring up since Hil mentioned how many eggs would have been in a flourless chocolate torte.

True vegans don't even eat things like honey.

ETA: I was wondering if that's why she called herself a vegetarian.

True vegans don't even eat things like honey

But ... what's the thinking behind that?

I'm a bit annoyed that it looks like a lot of tonight's finale is going to be a big commercial for the next season.

Amy, no animal by-products at all - so vegan should exclude honey too.

A college professor I once knew took his daughter to task because she was complaining about bees being forced to make honey. He said: "I understand your concern about the bees, but what I object to is the treatment of farm workers who are picking the vegetables."

I assume it's exploiting the production of animals? I'm sure Hil has a way better response.

I assume it's exploiting the production of animals?

But the chickens aren't going to use the eggs, is my point.

Um, I'm clearly not a vegan. For those who are, I certainly admire the dedication it takes, though.

I don't know a lot about veganism, but the idea that you don't eat eggs suprises me. I mean, the chickens lay them anyway. Is there some objection to how chickens are raised and forced to lay? What about free-range chickens? which I bring up since Hil mentioned how many eggs would have been in a flourless chocolate torte.

For the eggs, it's largely about the treatment of the chickens. (Basically, treated horribly, even free-range ones, and generally killed when they're too old to lay eggs anymore.) I've seen vegan message boards get into epic wars over whether someone who keeps his or her own chickens as pets, takes very good care of them, cares about them, lets them have a huge yard to run around in, and eats their eggs, can still call him or herself vegan. The general consensus on that one seems to be that the chicken-keeper is not unethical, but does not fit into the definition of "vegan" anymore, either. At one point, I saw this get into an argument about whether it was vegan to take the eggs from the pet chickens and feed them to your pet dogs. (A lot of the definition protection comes from people getting frustrated with friends or restaurants giving them some food that contains eggs or dairy and justifying it with "My sister/cousin/whatever is vegan and she'll eat that!" So a lot of vegans get kind of antsy when they see the label "vegan" being applied to people who eat things that they won't eat.)

As for the honey, it's exploitation of the bees. (I do eat honey, and know several other people who call themselves vegan who do, too.) The basic argument would be that making honey is something that the bees do naturally, for the survival of their own hive and species, and it's wrong and selfish for humans to take advantage of their labor for our own wants.

Some vegans -- who usually term themselves animal liberationists or animal abolitionists -- even say that keeping pets is wrong, because you're subjecting the pet to your own schedule and wants. (If you actually follow these arguments all the way through, they usually end up at saying that domesticating those animals was wrong in the first place, and what we should be doing is spaying and neutering as many pets as possible, so that there won't be more animals born into that life. I disagree, and this is far enough from my own position that I haven't really read into it fully and can't totally explain the arguments, and I'm sure that someone who knows more about it would probably point out a ton of errors in this paragraph.)

(I really have no stake in the argument over the eggs from the pet chickens. I won't eat eggs from farmed chickens, and I've never known anyone who kept pet chickens, so it hasn't come up. Also, I got food poisoning from an egg sandwich several years ago, and the smell of cooked eggs has made me feel sick since then, so I probably wouldn't even get to the point of making that decision anyway.)

Thanks for explaining, Hil.

I've been a vegetarian, but I was always a little confused about vegans. The non-dairy stuff made some kind of sense, it's milk that wasn't intended for humans, the eggs were intended to be chicken embryos, but the honey never made sense.