Eddie Jackson's BBQ Blitz Is A Traveling Competition Show

Photo - Twitter

Season 11 Food Network Star winner Eddie Jackson's show will premiere on Food Network on Friday, October 9th at 10:30pm.  So far we knew that the show would be called BBQ Blitz and according to the pilot from Food Network Star, Eddie would travel around to restaurants trying their barbecue.

Food Network revealed their October programming highlights, and in the press release, BBQ Blitz is described as:

"Game on! FOOD NETWORK STAR winner and former NFL player Eddie Jackson is taking a barbecue battle on the road in new series BBQ Blitz. In each city, three of the best grillers, smokers, and fire-roasters will cook off for a chance to win $5,000 and the title of best barbecue chef.

Online in September, get to know more about host Eddie Jackson and go behind-the-scenes of his new show. Join the BBQ journey with #BBQBlitz."

So this means the show will involve Eddie Jackson traveling to different cities and being a host of a competition show that puts barbecue chefs against each other for a $5,000 prize.  The show is currently filming and you can probably see some updates on social media using #BBQBlitz.

I am sure this may disappoint some people who would rather see the Food Network Star winner get a cooking show.  Also, a lot of people complain about too many traveling shows and competition shows on Food Network, and this combines them both into one show.  It seems like for this season of Food Network Star, 'the network' was looking for a host rather than a cook, so the POV's on the show were pretty much useless.

Paula Deen To Compete On Dancing With The Stars

ABC's Dancing With The Stars will start its 21st season on Monday, September 21st and it appears that Paula Deen will be competing on this season.  While there has been no official announcement, multiple sources are reporting that Paula Deen will appear on the upcoming season.  Other 'celebrities' that have been confirmed or rumored include: Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys), Bindi Irwin (Crocodile Hunter's daughter), Alexa Vega (actress),  and Victor Espinoza (Triple Crown winning jockey).

Paula Deen was rumored to be on the show in the past, but apparently the time wasn't right.  This show seems to be one that celebrities out of the spotlight appear on to try to get back into the spotlight.  Paula Deen is probably trying to continue her comeback by appearing on Dancing With The Stars, while ABC is probably hoping the controversy of having her on the show will draw ratings.

Paula's dancing partner isn't known yet, but I would expect some heavy flirting being done by Paula. 

Great Food Truck Race Season 6 Spoilers

Photo - Food Network

The sixth season of The Great Food Truck Race premiered last night on the Food Network.  This season travels route 66 and has stops in the following cities: Santa Monica, CA,  Sedona, AZ, Santa Fe, NM, Amarillo, TX, Tulsa, OK, St. Louis, MO, Springfield, IL and Chicago, IL.  This year the trucks competing are not rookies competing for a food truck, but veteran food truckers that will compete for a $50,000 cash prize.

The food trucks competing are: Diso's Italian Sandwich Society (Brooklyn, New York), GD Bro Truck (Orange Country, California), Pho Nomenal Dumplings (Raleigh, North Carolina), Postcards (Los Angeles), Spice It Up (Phoenix), The Guava Tree Truck (Dallas) and Waffle Love (Provo, Utah).

As the food trucks advertise their locations on social media and local newspapers do stories on the race while it is filming, the order the food trucks are eliminated can be determined.  If you are interested in seeing which trucks are eliminated in each episode, and who the final two trucks are, continue reading.  Obviously it is a spoiler, but it just reveals the final two trucks and not the winner.

Food Network President Brooke Johnson To Retire

Photo - Scripps

The Hollywood Reporter just reported

that Food Network President Brooke Johnson has announced that she will retire.  Brooke joined Food Network as the president in 2004 and will remain with the company as a consultant through the end of 2016.

Her bio on the Scripps Network Interactive site states:

"Named President of Food Network in 2004, Brooke Bailey Johnson  was elevated in 2010 to head of the entire food category at Scripps Networks which includes Food Network, Cooking Channel, FoodNetwork.com, CookingChannelTV.com, Food2.com, Recipezaar.com and Enterprises, the new business and licensing and merchandising arm of the company."

You may recall seeing Brooke on the Food Network Star finale's and she was on the most recent finale where she announced Eddie Jackson as the winner.  No replacement has been announced, but it will be interesting to see if they hire someone in-house or look elsewhere.  It will also be interesting to see if the type of programming on the channel will change after her departure.

Food Network Star Winner Crowned Tonight - Possible Spoiler?

Photo - Food Network

Tonight on the Food Network at 9pm ET/PT, the winner of Food Network Star will be revealed.  The remaining contestants who filmed pilots are Eddie Jackson, Dom Tesoriero, and Jay Ducote.  On the last episode Eddie did a pilot about Texas BBQ in unique places; Dom a pilot about visiting family owned Italian restaurants; and Jay a pilot about the country's best fried food.  All were traveling shows which seemed to be a bit different from the contestant's POV's throughout the season.

In an interview with a local Baton Rouge website, Jay said that his television show pilot was not his idea and was assigned by the Food Network.  This tells you that the contestants didn't actually get to pick their idea for their own pilot and were possibly assigned show ideas.

A commenter pointed this out, and it aligns with the possibility that Jay will win Food Network Star.  In April, a post on this website detailed the shows scheduled to air on the Food Network in 2015.  One of the shows had a working title of Deep Fried America and was described as "The host scours the country to find the most inventive and mouthwatering deep fried masterpieces."  This show was scheduled to begin in September 2015.  Food Network Star was filmed in early 2015, and the press release was about the upcoming shows was in April 2015, so it is possible this show was slated for the Food Network Star winner.  Other shows described in the April post had hosts listed (such as Curtis Stone, Michael Symon), but Deep Fried America didn't list a host.  A host may not have been listed so they didn't reveal the Food Network Star winner or they actually didn't have a host at the time.

Also, the Food Network Star Winner Poll on this website has Jay winning (although he posted a link on his social media which skewed results).  Finally, Jay is having a big watch party tonight in a Baton Rouge theater with 400-500 people expected.

So far everything points to Jay Ducote winning Food Network Star (including favorable editing throughout the season), and this post will be updated after the finale airs tonight to reveal the actual winner.

UPDATE - Food Network threw a little bit of a curveball and Eddie Jackson was crowned the season 11 Food Network Star.  Congrats to Eddie!  It appears his show will air on a Friday, October 9th at 10:30pm and will be called BBQ Blitz.  Pretty interesting that they gave him a primetime show rather than the standard Saturday/Sunday morning timeslot.

UPDATE - Another interesting tidbit about the finale - Jay explained at his viewing party that the finale was shot in June, and three different endings were filmed (meaning each contestant was filmed as a winner).  So even the contestants didn't know who was going to win until the finale aired. (Link)

Chopped Grill Masters Finale - Winner Gets $50,000

Photo - Food Network

Tonight on Food Network is the Chopped Grill Masters finale where the winner will go home with $50,000 in cash. The finalists competing are Chris Hart (episode 1 winner), Stan Hays (episode 2 winner), Leslie Roark Scott (episode 3 winner), and Angie Mar (episode 4 winner).

On tonight's final episode, the contestants have to cook with rattlesnake in the first round, offal and fruit in the entree round, and a breakfast item and classic pie for the dessert round.

I will update this post with the winner once the episode airs. This is the second Chopped Grill Masters tournament with Ernest Servantes winning the first one.

Update - Leslie Roark Scott was eliminated first, followed by Chris Hart.  Then in the dessert round Angie Mar defeated Stan Hays to win the $50,000 and was crowned Chopped Grill Masters champion.

Food Network Star Winner Poll

For the past three years there has been a poll on this site to determine who people wanted to win that season of Food Network Star.  Each season, the winner was predicted correctly through the polls (Justin Warner, Damaris Phillips, and Lenny Mcnab won the polls and the competition).  This season is a little bit different as there is not a vote to determine the winner of the show and Food Network will instead pick the winner.  The poll to see who people want to win this season is below, but this year it doesn't matter what the people think.

The finalists this year are Eddie Jackson, Jay Ducote, and Dom Tesoriero.  In their pilots, Jay's show concept was to travel around and try the country's best fried food.  Eddie's show concept was to travel around finding southern BBQ in areas you wouldn't expect, and Dom's pilot was going to family owned places and trying Italian food.

Answer the poll question below with who you want to win season 11 of Food Network Star:

Update- FYI - Jay posted links to this poll on his social media, so the results are a bit skewed. Thanks for the traffic Jay, but the poll isn't too accurate now. For what it's worth, Dom had a slight edge over Jay before this, but it was very close.

Food Network Star Episode 10 Elimination & Star Salvation Winner

Photo - Food Network

Tonight on Food Network Star, the winner of Star Salvation was revealed and rejoined the competition.  As many suspected, Dom Tesoriero was the contestant that won Star Salvation and now has a chance to become the next Food Network Star.  This is the second year in a row that and Italian chef was eliminated from the competition due to bad camera skills and magically learned them during Star Salvation.

During this episode the remaining contestants had to create their best dish and were allowed to use any of the eliminated contestants as their sous chef.  They each got one take to present the dish on camera, and Bobby, Giada, Bob, and Susie picked the three contestants who would produce pilots that would be directed by Rachael Ray.

The judges decided that Jay Ducote, Dom Tesoriero, and Eddie Jackson would be the finalists to make pilots.  This meant that Arnold Myint was eliminated and will not be the next Food Network Star.

Jay's show concept was to travel around and try the country's best fried food.  Eddie's show concept was to travel around finding southern BBQ in areas you wouldn't expect.  Dom's pilot was going to family owned places and trying Italian food.  So, all three pilots were traveling shows, and Jay and Eddie kind of brought in new concepts.


I will have a poll up shortly on who people want to win between the three finalists.  As no one gets to vote this year, it will not help us determine who is in the lead for voting, but it will still be interesting to see who people want to win.

Update - The poll is now live.

Giada De Laurentiis' Food Network Star Outfits - Too Revealing?

There has been a lot of chatter this year about Giada De Laurentiis' outfits on Food Network Star after each episode airs.  Websites, message boards, the comments section of this site, and even Food Network's Facebook page all have people talking about Giada's revealing clothing on the show.


There weren't too many complaints at the beginning of the season, but as the season went on and the outfits became more revealing, many people were commenting about her wardrobe.  So, I decided to compile screenshots of all of her outfits this season so you can judge for yourself.  Below are her outfits from each episode.  If you want to dig through comments of people complaining, you can scroll through the posts made to Food Network's Facebook Page (you have to scroll to each date that is a Sunday).


Episode 1 - Two outfits - Nothing too revealing/controversial.

Katie Lee Selling Home For $6.5 Million

Photo - Sotheby's

Food Network's Katie Lee has listed her Hamptons home on the market for $6.5 million.  The house has 6 bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms and sits on approximately 2 acres of land and includes a pool and outdoor pizza oven.

The Wall Street Journal said Katie Lee wanted to “downsize a bit,” but plans to stay in the area.  She was also quoted as saying, “I am working more and I want to simplify.  I have always enjoyed the process of renovating and decorating and I’m ready for my next project.”

After Katie Lee's divorce with Billy Joel in 2009, she got their West Village apartment, which she later sold for $11.65 million (Link).

Here is the real estate listing from Sotheby's, which has 23 pictures of the house if you are interested.  I guess it pays to have been married to a rock star.

Alton Brown Giving Up Alcohol For A Year

Photo - Facebook

Last week on social media, Alton Brown revealed that he is giving up alcohol for a year.  This was kind of surprising to many as people know he has a love for bourbon.  Alton posted the following picture and message:

"Having decided to take a year-long break from alcohol, I've adopted a new go-to beverage: sparkling water and aromatic bitters. Yes, most bitters contain around 30% alcohol but we're talking 8-10 drops here so I think I'm good."

Many people were curious and asking Alton why he was giving up alcohol, and he responded with:

"Since so many of you are asking ... I turned 53 yesterday and decided to give myself an alcohol free year. Not because I have a problem, but for various reasons. The last few years saw a sharp rise in my ethanol intake. On top of that, I've put on weight. So..."

Hopefully there isn't more to this and it wasn't a factor in his recent divorce.  The weight gain can probably also be attributed to his recent live show tour where he ate a lot of good food.  Hopefully this works out for Alton and good luck to him reaching his goal.

Food Network Star Episode 9 Elimination Plus Star Salvation

Photo - Food Network

On tonight's episode of Food Network Star, the remaining contestants were assigned a theme and had to demo a dish reflecting that theme live  in front of a camera.  The live demo must be two minutes long.  Jeff Mauro and Katie Lee then join Bobby and Giada to view the contestants hosting a segment of a live show as an ensemble.  Each contestant was responsible for doing a 5-minute segment and each had a different theme. 

The judges decided that Eddie and Jay performed the best and were safe.  They decided that Alex performed the worst due to him cooking soup for a summer family reunion, and he was eliminated.

In Star Salvation, Rue Rusike, Dom Tesoriero, and Alex McCoy completed to remain in the competition.  This is the last episode of Star Salvation and the winner will be re-joining the competition next week.  The winner was not revealed at the end of the episode as it ended with a cliffhanger, so you will have to wait until next week to see who won and will be back to compete.