Never shy about making the challenges on “Top Chef” interesting, the producers of this awesome Bravo show threw yet another curve ball to the chef-testants last night on episode 2. Along with guest judge Sam Kass, who is the assistant White House chef, Padma announced the quick fire challenge, which was the “bi-partisandwich” challenge…even the names of these challenges are creative. But wait, there’s more. They would work in groups of two, in an apron for two, meaning one person could use their left hand and the other their right hand, making it even more difficult to make a simple sandwich in 30 minutes. They drew knives to determine who they’d be working with.

Tamesha and Amanda, with their basic grilled cheese with prosciutto; and Tiffany and Lynne’s saltimbocca sandwich were the worst two in Kass’ eyes. And the best two? Angelo and Tracey’s flounder sandwich with spicy mayo; and Kenny and Ed’s Korean ahi tuna sandwich with cucumber. And once again, Angelo’s team won the top prize, which for this week was immunity for both he and Tracey. Kenny again came in second and was annoyed.

For the main challenge, in honor of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, the chefs would be creating a new version of a healthy and tasty school lunch, using the typical budget of $130 to feed 50 students. Yikes. They would work in teams of four, and each chef would be responsible for one item for one menu. Angelo and Tracey got to pick their teammates first, and not surprisingly picked Kenny and Ed, which was utter game play on their part, because if they lost, only Kenny and Ed would be on the chopping block.

Team 1 of Angelo, Tracey, Kenny and Ed made a chicken burger, a celery and peanut butter side, sweet potato puree and bread pudding.

Team 2 of Jacqueline, Amanda, Tamesha and Stephen made braised chicken thigh with sherry, vegetable rice, tomato salad and banana pudding with strawberries.

Team 3 of Alex, Tim, Kevin and Andrea made barbecue chicken, mac & cheese, coleslaw and a melon kabob dessert.

Team 4 of Tiffany, Lynne, Kelly and Arnold made pork tacos, black bean cake with crispy sweet potato, roasted corn salad and caramelized sweet potato sherbet.

They had the losing teams go in first–Team 1 and Team 2. The judges berated Team 1 for having no vegetables to speak of other than Angelo’s celery. Kenny made the mistake of calling a tomato a vegetable, when in fact, as Kass pointed out, it is indeed a fruit. Oops. Tom asked Angelo if he would have made something different had he not had immunity, and Angelo had a cocky response: “I can’t answer that.” Dude, easy!

For Team 2, they thought Amanda’s chicken was too sophisticated for kids’ palates and also didn’t appreciate her use of sherry (i.e. alcohol) in the dish, and also commented that it was too expensive of an ingredient. For that matter, Jacqueline’s pudding had less strawberries than they could afford, and instead added a whopping 2 pounds of sugar. Yikes.

The winning group was Team 4. Despite the fact that Arnold called Kelly out for not being a team player, this team worked well together and won. And the winning portion of the dish went to Kelly for her pork carnita tacos, which included tortillas made with oatmeal. Man, that sounds good.

The judges decided to pick two chefs from Team 1 and two from Team 2 for the chopping block–Kenny, Ed, Amanda, and Jacqueline. Kenny made the apple bread pudding and Ed the sweet potato puree, however the reason they were on the block was more for the lack of vegetables in the overall meal–something that was really Angelo’s fault as much as Kenny and Ed–but Angelo had immunity. On to Amanda and Jacqueline–and their reasons for being on the block were already mentioned above. The use of sherry, and the too-sweet pudding.

In the end, it was Jacqueline who was sent home, because the judges felt adding all that sugar to a dessert when the goal was to make healthy dishes for kids, was irresponsible and went against the very rules of the challenge.

So now we’re down to 15 chef-testants, but already it looks like Angelo, Kenny and Kelly are going to consistently battle for the top spots just as Kevin, the Voltaggio brothers and Jen did last season.
Meanwhile, we are just getting started, but this season is already way exciting. Let me know what you think of this season so far, and thanks for reading!

* It’s a funny day to have a stockholders meeting, but that’s appears to be what Marvel Entertainment did and, yes, they approved the widely heralded Disney merger. Russ Fischer at /film has the details.

* With, as far as I can see, no major wide releases or, as I far as I can tell, even large expansions to talk about and not much other information available, I’m dispensing with this week’s box office preview. However, Jolly Carl DiOrio is here to tell us that this weekend is going to look a little something like last weekend.

That’s not to say there aren’t some new movies out that you can see this week — though you’ll possibly have to live in New York or L.A. to see them. Since I dig Tennessee Williams, I’m sorry to see the bad reviews for “Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. South Korea’s “The Chaser” was a hit at home for director Na Hong-Jin and looks intriguing to me. It has also been optioned for a high profile American remake, possibly involving Leonardo DiCaprio and screenwriter William Monahan of “The Departed.”

* Speaking of box office, I’m not sure this is exactly news, but, get this, “Avatar” is doing really well — it just passed the $800 million mark worldwide — and looks likely to continue to do extremely well for quite a long time. Even the busiest man in the world apparently couldn’t wait to see it in the White House movie theater (I wonder if it can show digital 3-D?) Also note that eight year-old Sacha and 11 year-old Malia were allowed to see it even though it has a PG-13 rating . Expect this to be discussed at length on the Sunday shows.

* I had to update yesterday’s post to correct this. Apparently, The Weinstein Company is going to leave “Nine” in the roughly 1,400 theaters it’s in, despite last week’s poor showing.

* It’s now “Sir Captain Picard” to you. Alongside Patrick Stewart, film and theater director Nicolas Hytner (“The Madness of King George”) just got an excuse to be extra snooty.

* Neil Blomkamp of “District 9” wants to make original films that aren’t based on older franchises and, so, has said he’ll stay away from large budgets. He’s not dumb.

This week’s “Biggest Loser” on NBC was a special event, as the backdrop was Washington D.C., where the contestants would not only have a chance to spread the word about the show but also talk to members of congress about their own journeys and how they feel they could teach fellow Americans about a fit lifestyle.

The first thing host Alison Sweeney told them when they arrived in DC was that they would no longer be blue vs. black, but would be going back to being singles. Mrs. Mike pointed out that they have only been teams for a couple weeks, so once again they have confused us all. But okay. So the pop challenge was to gather people off the streets to come and work out with them, with Bob and Jillian leading the way….and the one who brought the most people to work out would win. Allen went straight to a fire station to lure his fire fighting “brothers” but it was Liz who drew the biggest crowd and won the challenge.

After showing the contestants telling two members of congress their stories, it was time for the main challenge. It was a four-stage challenge in front of the Jefferson memorial and Liz would be allowed to skip one stage since she won the initial challenge. The first leg was running a mile, something that freaked Tracey out because of what happened to her at the start of this season. But she made it, even though she didn’t finish high enough to move on to the next round. Those who did move on were Rebecca, Daniel, Allen, Amanda, Rudy and Liz. Then the next round was to collect pennies that were on the steps of the memorial and put them into containers representing each of them. Liz sat this one out and had a bye into the third round, and joining her would be Rudy, Daniel and Rebecca. For round 3, they had to balance on a brick holding a pilates ball, and whoever fell off first would be out. Daniel and Liz were eliminated, leaving Rebecca and Rudy. For the final round, Rebecca and Rudy had to climb up and down a step and the first one to do it 200 times won. Rebecca jumped out to a lead she never relinquished, and won the challenge…and the highly coveted immunity at this week’s weigh in.

Then the contestants were treated to lunch with Sam Kass, one of the Obamas’ personal chefs, who took them into the first family’s garden and then prepared them a salad.

Then it was time for the weigh in and since they were playing as individuals now, the bottom two would face elimination. Rebecca had immunity, so she went first and lost 4 pounds.

Shay was next and lost 9 (putting her under 400 for the first time!), followed by Tracey who lost 3. So Tracey was in danger of falling below the yellow line. Daniel lost 11, finally making up for two lousy weeks in which he could have and really should have been eliminated. Allen was next and lost 9, followed by Danny who continued to impress with a loss of 12 pounds. Rudy then weighed in and lost 9 pounds. Liz followed and lost 3, putting her below the line with Tracey. Uh-oh. Finally, Amanda was next and she lost 7 pounds, ensuring her another week on campus and putting Liz and Tracey below the line.

So remember early on when Tracey was busy playing the game that she made a bunch of enemies? Well, you’d have to think it was payback time…but then after each of them stated their case, Shay said she wasn’t impressed with Liz’ desire or lack thereof to remain on the ranch. Oh, here we go…..was Tracey going to hang around again and would Liz regret not booting her off a few weeks back?

The first one to vote was Amanda, and she brought up the fact that she didn’t trust Tracey so voted for her. Shay voted for Liz, but then Tracey had three straight votes from Danny, Daniel and Rebecca. See ya, Tracey. She defended her earlier gameplay, saying she felt she needed to play the game to remain in it, because since she wasn’t working out as much she needed all the help she could get. Unfortunately that came at the expense of alienating the other contestants.

So Tracey went home to her husband and four kids, and after losing 44 pounds on the ranch, has lost another 41 giving her 85 pounds lost so far. But not only that, she and her family returned to the place in California where she had broke down trying to run a mile and wound up in the hospital…and she completed that mile with no problem. Not only that, she looks great. Good for Tracey that she realized what was important and worked hard to achieve that. Don’t be surprised if she wins the $100K at the finale for most weight lost at home.

So now we’re down to the final eight–Rebecca, Shay, Daniel, Allen, Danny, Rudy, Liz and Amanda. Who do you like? I still think Danny is the one to beat. See you next week, when we’ll be Tracey free!