Hell's Kitchen

Ok - took a little time off from my craft table tonight and got caught up on HK. It's entertaining TV but you couldn't get me to eat there!! And here are the following reasons:

1. Maybe some of the scenes were cut but from the looks of it, several people touch the food before they take it out to the diners. Chef Ramsey is doing most of the touching and not once do you see him wash his hands.

2. Chef Ramsey and the rest of the contestants touch their faces a lot while they are in the kitchen! Then they touch the food!! Hello!!! If you have pimples and you touch your face, then touch food, you can possibly contaminate the food you are handling with bacteria! I thought I remember reading that you can transfer salmonella from your pimples!!! Eeeuw!

3. All the contestants smoke. I know that this should not be a cause for prejudice but sure hope that they wash their hands after they smoke and BEFORE they handle food.

4. One of the episodes even showed one of the contestants with sweat streaming down his face and onto the pasta he was cooking! Ohhhhh...it's making me nauseous just thinking about it!

5. I think there are only 3 contestants who really know what they are doing. I think the rest were casts for their personalities (and definitely not on their level of attractiveness).

6. One contestant tried to use unwashed lettuce for garnish on the shrimp cocktail. His excuse for not doing it? He said "he couldn't help it"! Yikes!

In my other life, I had dreams of becoming a chef too and went to cooking school. One of the requirements was to intern at a restaurant. I had to do a rotation in the restaurant kitchen and the area that was such an eye opener for me was the "cold" table where salads were prepared. I had to do a lot of chopping and slicing for dinner salads. One of the regular restaurant employee was working along side me one evening and I don't know if he was showing off or what but he was trying to do some fancy maneuvers with his knife. Well, shortly after that, he sliced his finger! I don't think it came off but it bled profusely. He acted all cool and merely got a paper towel to wrap his finger in and continued to slice!! I was horrified! Hasn't this guy heard of HIV or Hepatitis??? Well, you can guess from here that I don't order salads at restaurants anymore!! If it's cold, I don't order it (unless it's ice cream :-)!

See why I do Dream Dinners? It's like eating out but you have control over the touching and cooking of your food! I have many more food horror stories but I don't want to completely gross you out now so I'll save the rest for another time!