"Top Chef": Is it time to pack their knives and go?

Two things about me and "Top Chef": I'm not a fan of reality TV (isn't part of the idea of TV-watching to escape reality?) and it seems a little weird to watch a TV show about cooking where you never get to taste the food and you don't learn anything useful about cooking.

Those prejudices aside, I have been a fan of "Top Chef." I got caught up in the whole Volt Bros drama, and spent way too much time quietly cheering for Carla. But as the saga and the spinoffs continue, I've found myself cooling on it, in the same way you love a food until that moment when you take one bite too much. I liked the first season of "Top Chef Masters" but erased the last season without watching more than an episode or two -- and I knew people competing. I watched one episode of "Top Chef Desserts" and wasn't interested enough to go on.

So, with the regular season of "Top Chef" starting Wednesday night on Bravo (they're in Texas this time, which is probably not a surprise anymore), I'm curious how you feel about it.

Do you love it and hang on Padma's costume change?
Are you bored enough to stick your head in a stockpot?
Does the whole thing just make you want to yank out Tom's soul patch?

Pack, Pack the Knives and Go: Padma video

If the last season of "Top Chef Masters" had been as fun as the Padma Lakshmi mashup video, I might still be watching . . .

Food For Thought: What I'm reading this morning

• Are ravenous women sexy? That's Padma Lakshmi's theory on why every interviewer asks beautiful women about what they eat, on the The New York Times blog .
• Here's your chance to get your own recipe served at the Durham Bulls ballpark. Andrea Weigl has the details at Mouthfuls.
• Esquire's Ian Bassingthwaighte shares 13 things he learned from his sister in culinary school. (One warning on using dish towels for grabbing hot pots: Make sure the dish towel isn't damp or you'll get a nasty steam burn.)
• If you liked those Honey-Sriracha Glazed Wings I shared on Monday, "Sriracha Cookbook" author Randy Clemens shares the secret on how to make your own sriracha, on Leite's Culinaria.
• And one more: N.C. historian and food explorer David Cecelski discovers real hoe cakes in Person County.