***SPOILERS***

1. I thought the challenge was cool and right now I would have chosen the bass because I’m anti-chicken. I thought it was interesting how close the vote was and I wonder how much Virginia’s personality won her that challenge over the chicken itself. I got a little teary when Gordon presented the tickets to London and the personal invitation to his restaurant. I told Beau that I would have been happy with that prize alone because that’s the kind of thing I love.

2. I thought both restaurants looked very nice, but I totally agreed with Ramsay’s comments about the grafitti in Heather’s. That’s where her immaturity showed.

3. I thought both menus looked tasty - I would have enjoyed eating at either place, I think. The key was going to come down to execution of the menus - that’s where the winner was going to be determined because up to that point they were pretty evenly matched.

4. The choosing of the teams brought great guffaws from us. And then Virginia telling her team that she chose the weakest on purpose brough more laughter. What an idiot - she just sabotaged her own win with that move. I loved that Keith then demanded money to perform for her. It was slightly low class, but shoud have clued her in to her dilemma. It didn’t.

5. I thought Heather edged out Virginia in the execution of the dinner service. Both were watching the quality control, but Heather had more trust of her team and it enabled them to work well in getting the food out. Virginia’s control of the plating could have been an utter disaster if she hadn’t relented when she did and asked for help. I think Heather showed better management skills this time - she was wise to tell them that for the next four hours she wasn’t their friend but that she was their boss. It also helped that she had a team that wanted to help her win.

6. So the winner is ... Heather. Where I started blubbering was when I noticed Gordon walk to Virginia to give her a hug while Heather was basking in the realization and cheers of her win. Then after Heather got downstairs, Gordon escorted Virginia, whispering to her that she had nothing to be ashamed of and that she had remarkable talent. That got the waterworks going. It’s those moments when he gives the positive feedback that get to me. Because I know that he doesn’t say it unless he believes it. It’s those moments that make me want to work for him.

It was a meh season, but entertaining enough that I’ll tune in for HK3.

***SPOILERS***

Alas, poor Kaysar, ‘twas not to be. Shame that he got the boot, I like him even if he is a poor BB player. The shock on his face when Chenbot told him about James’ non-allegiance to the BB6ers was sad to see.

That whole seance thing was stupid, imho. Cool that they brought back the former players, but what a lame thing overall.

Now, to the HOH competition. What a mess that was. I went to bed thinking that they had to redo it in order to keep the integrity of the game intact. That Boogie wasn’t booted for his non-answer and then Howie was booted for the exact same thing was not right. Turns out the producers did realize that it wasn’t a fair game and it was replayed; this will air on Sunday’s show. I won’t tell you who won the competition, but you can find out at Joker’s. Some are unhappy with the redo and are threatening a lawsuit - whiners.

In the meantime, I’m very intrigued by the Coup d’Etat twist, which should make for some interesting reading for the next week.

***SPOILERS***

I’m fed up with James. Yes, I sympathize with his ire over Janelle’s noms last week, but I don’t think he was ever truly loyal to the BB6ers in the house. I think he came in with his alliance with Dani. The irony is that while he became beloved last season because the nerd herd bashed him to the sov6 where he really was loyal to the sov6, he has taken the accusations from last season and made them reality this season. Me no likey.

I would love to see James go home tonight - how about that for a twist? Unfortunately, Kaysar will be the one to go home. Unless the coup d’etat twist thing plays in to the eviction tonight. Can we say double eviction? I could live with that.

Chill Town are playing the whole house. I don’t trust their new alliance with the Legion of Doom. I don’t trust their seemingly former alliance with the BB6ers. I think they are just the two of them, manipulating to further themselves and themselves only. That the others in the house believe their lies is amazing.

Marcellus needs to shut his trap. Erika does too, for that matter.

Chicken George is sad and yet I like him. I think he’s sincere, but he’s completely outmatched by the evil schemers in the house.

Howie is a lot less likable than last year. I think Rachel grounded him last season. He’s a nutjob.

I have no idea who I want to win this season - the whole thing is a phenomenal train wreck.

***SPOILERS***

I have a slightly different take than Jay and Beth and it comes from having worked in a commercial kitchen setting - both at culinary school and during my internship.

Culinary school involved preparing and serving food for various functions at the school including receptions for graduating classes that occured every eight weeks. If I remember correctly, we prepared food for about 300 people for these graduation functions.

My internship was a month at Young Life camp where I was an AM cook (breakfast and lunch) and we prepared meals for up to 400 people everyday. This was not cafeteria food, but very good food that was served family style to the tables of campers and camp staff in our dining hall. My parents and the Cooties can attest to the quality of the food and the service in this camp setting.

I was middle management of a sort while I was there. I served under the Food Service Manager and the two sous chefs (one was the AM sous, the other was the PM sous). I was sort of like an assistant sous chef with the volunteer college (2 people) and high school kids (we had 5 for the AM shift; PM had more because their food was more complicated) as the line cooks. Not that I didn’t do my share of cooking on the line - we all did. However, for one week of the month, the two sous chefs were away from camp and I was the AM sous chef for that week - I learned quickly how important it is to have and be a good leader in the kitchen when guests are counting on delicious food served all at the same time because of our tight program schedule each day.

We had the same menu each week, but the change ups came with the random number of vegetarians and food allergies we got with each new group of campers. As such we had to accommodate those special needs with each meal, depending on what was to be served. Also, the AM cooks had to prepare the breakfast kits for what we called the “canoe breakfast” - leaders would sign up their cabins for canoe breakfast, which meant that they would canoe out to a remote spot on the camp property where college volunteers would prepare a great campfire breakfast for this small group. We had to make sure we had enough food for each group every morning (they were never the same size) and we had to make sure we have enough hot beverages if it was a cold morning, too.

So our mornings started anywhere between 4:30-5:00am, depending on when breakfast was to be served that day. Breakfast was different each day - pancakes, French toast, breakfast pizza, scrambled eggs, Egg McSaranacs; each served with sausage or bacon, hash browns, fruit, cereal preset on the tables. There’s nothing more tedious than standing at the griddle for two hours flipping pancakes or French toast. I would go back to my room reeking of breakfast.

Then came lunch. No kidding, as soon as breakfast was done we started work on lunch. We worked on that until about 11:00am when the PM cooks would come on shift and they would take that over. At that point we would start prepping for the next day’s breakfast. For French toast and pancakes, that meant making the custard and the batter. Do you know how many eggs go into a custard for French toast for 400 people? A lot. We would have two people cracking eggs for about 90 minutes. Everyday we cracked huge quantities of eggs. We would prepare the bacon or sausage onto sheet pans so that all we had to do in the morning was slide them into the ovens. The potatoes were always made from leftovers from dinner the night before - we would dice them, mix them with peppers and have them ready for the griddle in the morning. Breakfast pizzas meant thawing the pizza crusts overnight. French toast meant cutting the Texas toast slices in half to let them get stale overnight. And also prepping the canoe breakfast pizza stuff, which meant more eggs, potatoes, meat in a separate storage area. On a good day we were done prepping by 2:30. On bad days it took until 3:30. Doesn’t seem that late until you remember that we’ve been working since 5am.

OK, all that to get to my perspective of the happenings on Monday’s HK episode. I think Keith got a bad rap when he was expediting. Sure he could have been stronger in his orders to Virginia and Heather, but I don’t think you need to shout to be heard or to berate like Gordon does to get results. In my experience, the week that I was the leader in the kitchen was our best week in production and it all came down to leadership differences between our regular sous chef, who was a bit gruff, and I, who was firm but kinder. The kids all told me that they loved working for me that week and wished I could be their boss for the last week. In that week things ran smoother than they had the previous two weeks - there was no bickering, they were focused on their tasks, they were motivated, and we were able to end most days early because of that.

That said, I do think that Virginia did very well at expediting and she deserved to stay over Keith for her great performances at that stage. But overall I think that Keith is still the better chef of the two.

Who do I think will win HK2? I have no clue - it’s a complete toss up.