Jordon just finished up his Christmas Gift Guides for 2010.  Check them out below and if you are looking for the limited edition 2009 versions, they are included as well.

• November 1st | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Tween Boys
• November 4th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Sports Fan
• November 8th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Outdoorsman
• November 11th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Wives/Mothers of Your Kids
• November 15th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Really Smart People
• November 18th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Toddlers
• November 22nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Husbands and Fathers (guest post by Wendy)
• November 25th | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for Geeks and Gadget Lovers
• December 2nd | 2010 Christmas Gift Guide for the Road Warrior

In case you are looking, here are the 2009 Gift Guides

• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Tween Boys
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for the Sports Fan
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for the Outdoorsman
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for the Geeks and Gadget Lovers
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Really Smart People
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Kids Under Two Years of Age
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Fathers
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Wives (and the mother of your kids)
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for the Road Warrior
• 2009 Christmas Gift Guide for Your Hard to Shop For Co-Workers

When you are a loving husband whose wife develops gestational diabetes and is put on bedrest, what do you do? Create the most adorable breakfasts ever. via

After the rebate, it’s 50% off and only $250.  To us GMC’s tagline, it’s professional grade.  The mixer can effectively mix up to 14 cups of all-purpose flour per recipe and produce up to 8 pounds of mashed potatoes.

via

I posted a Christmas Gift Guide for JordonCooper.com this morning; Christmas Gift Ideas for the Men in Your Life.  Some gadgets, some video, some sporting ideas and some ideas that I had no idea that Jordon wanted until he told me.  I hope it helps you with some ideas for what to get your loved one for Christmas and takes a bit of stress off the holiday season.

Readers Digest asked two dozen servers from across the country tell you if they could get away with it? Well, for starters, when to go out, what not to order, what really happens behind the kitchen’s swinging doors, and what they think of you and your tips. Here, from a group that clears a median $8.01 an hour in wages and tips, a few revelations that aren’t on any menu.

• On Christmas Day, when people ask why I’m there, I might say, “My sister’s been in the hospital,” or, “My brother’s off to war, so we’re celebrating when he gets back.” Then I rake in the tips.
• If you make a big fuss about sending your soup back because it’s not hot enough, we like to take your spoon and run it under really hot water, so when you put the hot spoon in your mouth, you’re going to get the impression—often the very painful impression—that your soup is indeed hot.
• I’ve seen some horrible things done to people’s food: steaks dropped on the floor, butter dipped in the dishwater.
• I get this call all the time: “Is the chef there? This is so-and-so. I’m a good friend of his.” If you’re his good friend, you’d have his cell.
• Trust your waitress. Say something like “Hey, it’s our first time in. We want you to create an experience for us. Here’s our budget.” Your server will go crazy for you.
• If you walk out with the slip you wrote the tip on and leave behind the blank one, the server gets nothing. It happens all the time, especially with people who’ve had a few bottles of wine.
• If you’re worried about cleanliness, check out the bathroom. If the bathroom is gross, you can be sure the kitchen is much worse.

This comes from The Independent

For Gordon Ramsay, the past few weeks have been like living in his very own Kitchen Nightmare. Only it has extended beyond his kitchen and into every other room of his house. Like an unwatched pot, the TV chef's personal and professional life has boiled over in spectacular fashion, leaving the mother of all cleaning-up jobs.

Not that anyone is rushing to pull on the Marigolds; quite the contrary. In typical fashion, Ramsay has heaped more coals this weekend on to a fire he lit three weeks ago when he sacked his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson. Specifically, he claimed his wife Tana has much to learn about what her father gets up to when not running restaurants, lashing out after his wife's parents wrote to their daughter, urging her to dump the man she married 14 years ago, aged 22.

The father of four was in combative form last week. Barely days after claiming he wouldn't be talking to the press about the farce enveloping his globe-spanning business empire, Gordon Ramsay Holdings (GRH), the chef penned an extraordinary open letter to his mother-in-law, Greta Hutcheson. He used it to heap innuendo on her husband's "complex" private life that left "many of my key staff feeling they have had to cover on his behalf". Ramsay, 44, who admitted hiring a private detective to follow Mr Hutcheson, added: "His away days were rarely what I thought they were." As if the insinuations weren't character assassination enough, Ramsay went on to denounce Hutcheson as a "manipulating and controlling... dictator". He also asked Mrs Hutcheson to stop "punishing" her daughter.

Amazon picked some of their favourite cookbooks of 2010, including their favourite, Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours

It includes this recipe, Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

Ingredients

• 1 pumpkin, about 3 pounds
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• ¼ pound stale bread, thinly sliced and cut into ½-inch chunks
• ¼ pound cheese, such as Gruyère, Emmenthal, cheddar, or a combination, cut into ½-inch chunks
• 2–4 garlic cloves (to taste), split, germ removed, and coarsely chopped
• 4 strips bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
• About ¼ cup snipped fresh chives or sliced scallions
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
• About 1/3 cup heavy cream
• Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Directions

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment, or find a Dutch oven with a diameter that’s just a tiny bit larger than your pumpkin. If you bake the pumpkin in a casserole, it will keep its shape, but it might stick to the casserole, so you’ll have to serve it from the pot — which is an appealingly homey way to serve it. If you bake it on a baking sheet, you can present it freestanding, but maneuvering a heavy stuffed pumpkin with a softened shell isn’t so easy. However, since I love the way the unencumbered pumpkin looks in the center of the table, I’ve always taken my chances with the baked-on-a-sheet method, and so far, I’ve been lucky.
2. Using a very sturdy knife--and caution--cut a cap out of the top of the pumpkin (think Halloween jack-o’-lantern). It’s easiest to work your knife around the top of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. You want to cut off enough of the top to make it easy for you to work inside the pumpkin. Clear away the seeds and strings from the cap and from inside the pumpkin. Season the inside of the pumpkin generously with salt and pepper, and put it on the baking sheet or in the pot.
3. Toss the bread, cheese, garlic, bacon, and herbs together in a bowl. Season with pepper--you probably have enough salt from the bacon and cheese, but taste to be sure--and pack the mix into the pumpkin. The pumpkin should be well filled--you might have a little too much filling, or you might need to add to it. Stir the cream with the nutmeg and some salt and pepper and pour it into the pumpkin. Again, you might have too much or too little--you don’t want the ingredients to swim in cream, but you do want them nicely moistened. (But it’s hard to go wrong here.)
4. Put the cap in place and bake the pumpkin for about 2 hours--check after 90 minutes--or until everything inside the pumpkin is bubbling and the flesh of the pumpkin is tender enough to be pierced easily with the tip of a knife. Because the pumpkin will have exuded liquid, I like to remove the cap during the last 20 minutes or so, so that the liquid can bake away and the top of the stuffing can brown a little.
5. When the pumpkin is ready, carefully, very carefully--it’s heavy, hot, and wobbly--bring it to the table or transfer it to a platter that you’ll bring to the table.

Storing
It’s really best to eat this as soon as it’s ready. However, if you’ve got leftovers, you can scoop them out of the pumpkin, mix them up, cover, and chill them; reheat them the next day.