Plans are underway. Secret plans. This picture contains important components of those plans.

Just so you know.

As you may know, over at YAD, I had a hosting drive to pay for the small but not insignificant annual hosting costs of my two sites. It was wildly successful, and so I feel just guilty enough to recommit to more content on Forkbastard. Specifically, more ranty stuff. Also more cooky stuff, but there's a lot of stuff I kept telling myself I'd get around to ranting about last year that I never did. So expect more of that in 2013.

And since it's a new year, let me offer a New Year's Resolution to all of America. STOP FUCKING EATING DORITOS LOCOS TACOS ALREADY.

So, what do you eat when you can't chop an onion?

Or, to put it another way, where the fuck have I been? If you read You Are Dumb, and follow it on Twitter, you may be aware that a couple of weeks ago, I sprained my elbow in a classic Minnesota slip-and-fall. Which left me with a left arm that cannot hold down an onion or a loaf of sturdy bread with enough force to keep it steady while the right hand chops through it.

OK, the word is out and it's officially open. If City Pages can post about it, then so can I. The food truck that popped my food truck, banh mi, and lamb belly cherries is now a counter-service restaurant at 28th and Lyndale, and on Sunday night, because Twitter said they were open, we had dinner and dessert there.

When last we left, my predictions were as follows:

Mendelsohn
Estes
Appleman
Greenspan
Love
Freitag
Vigneron
Guarnichelli
Mehta
Falkner

Love went out in Week 1, Estes in Week 2, and it's time, before I watch Week 3 on the DVR, and without looking, I promise, my revised rankings:

Vigneron
Mendelsohn
Greenspan
Freitag
Appleman
Guarnichelli
Mehta
Falkner

Appleman moves up a few spots because I always hope he'll go out early. Vigneron drops way down because he's proving hella more mediocre than I remember.

And it's that time again. A seemingly short while after the Unholy Ascent of Zakarian and the point at which I stopped watching Iron Chef America almost by accident, we have a new season of The Next Iron Chef, and it's a Loser's Ball! AKA All-Star Challenge, AKA Iron Chef: Redemption. Which means, with a few hours left before airtime, it's time for a new set of predictions. Here's the cast.

Clearly, things have gotten completely out of hand. This is a two week post, with the final box just days away. I have to say, the downside to not getting fresh produce every Thursday is not having to drive to pick up the fresh produce every Thursday.

Overall, I've kept things under control. Not a ton of long-term preservation other than the tomatoes, but the stuff in the last few weeks will stretch for months cough cough winter squash cough.

I'm back to a full fucking week behind on these posts, which you can blame on Borderlands 2, because it's the fault of Borderlands 2. My free time serves multiple masters.

Anyway, everything's still being managed properly. At this point, I'm so into the groove that, three weeks from now, I'm going to be FUCKED. I'll be back to buying vegetables in stores and it will mess me up. Here's where things stood as of last Thursday:

Last weekend, I finally got a chance to try Little Szechuan. The St. Paul location has apparently been a well-regarded institution for years, but this year they opened up a satellite location five minutes away from me, in the Shops At West End.

USED: W14 tomatoes, arugula, cilantro, W14 cherry tomatoes, W15 shallots, garlic

TOSSED: W14 green beans. Also, not every tomato survives to be used, but that's more the tomatoes than my ability to use them.

PART USED: The eternal carrots, sweet peppers, and hot peppers, W9 Savoy. W14 pickling cukes, W15 cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, pea tendrils, cucumbers.

STILL EXTANT: W14 watermelon, W15 sage, beets, broccoli, delicata squash,

WEEK SIXTEEN: