John wrote:

>>>> So Bob, what did you think about her recipe?
>>
>>> I didn't feel strongly enough about it to comment one way or the other.
>>
>> Would you ever duplicate such a thing? What about Koko's cake? I
>> don't base my critiques of cooking on whether I happen to like the
>> person.
>>
> He's got ya there Bob! Bryan bases his critiques on how he feels about the
> ingredients, not about how the final product tastes! Of course Bryan will
> swear that he can taste crappy indredients in any recipe, a claim which I
> doubt but may be true, who can tell except Bryan? ;-)

Hmmm... I never saw Bryan's post which you quoted above. Astraweb's been
pretty sucky these last couple days.

As to whether I'd duplicate *any* recipe I saw here, it's unlikely. I mostly
cook whatever I have on hand at that moment, especially this time of year,
and that set of on-hand ingredients probably won't include at least some of
the ingredients in both Barb's and koko's recently-posted recipes.

Hypothetically, though, if I *did* have all the ingredients, and I had some
reason (like a "Chopped"-type competition) to use all of them at that time,
I would be happy to duplicate both dishes -- and only hope that I could make
them as tasty as koko and Barb undoubtedly made theirs!

The thing is, what's the point of posting criticisms based on your personal
tastes? It's just a waste of bandwidth. Jill does the same thing; someone
will post a dessert recipe and Jill will reply with, "I don't have a sweet
tooth, so I wouldn't like that." What good does that do the *rest* of the
people on the group? It's sheer self-absorbed narcissism. We're not cooking
for Jill -- and we're not cooking for Bryan, either.

Bryan takes his postings into even more irrational territory when he
projects that a person who uses "unapproved" ingredients must automatically
be classified as a pig. How does using margarine make someone a pig?

It's a completely different (ObFood) kettle of fish when someone has a
commercial website with crappy recipes; in that case I think the site owner
has an obligation to perform quality control because they're being PAID when
the site is accessed. As far as I know, nobody's getting money from posting
here.

Bob