Our photo repository is here! The gallery contains a raw feed of our photos – they may be blurry, oriented incorrectly, and not have captions — all of this will be resolved as time permits.

Please note that if you wish to leave comments for the chefs, you may do so on this site. They’ll see everything you send!

Day two in Gotha started mid-morning for us, as we all slept in a little bit to get caught up from the trip. With less than 5 hours of sleep last night, I’m still dragging a little bit, but hope to catch up on sleep in the next day or so.

The weather in Gotha is “perfect for aspic work”, said Rick Potter, team manager. It’s clear and cold; not hot like when the team was here in 2000. It’s cool enough that you want a jacket when you leave to go outside, but any amount of walking makes you want to take the jacket off and enjoy the cool, crisp air.

After a good German breakfast at the hotel (the breakfast included roulades, pork, sausages, pickled onions, potatoes, a green salad, and more (believe it or not – MORE!)), the competitors and team manager (that’s Alan, Greg, and Rick, respectively) got to work organizing our prep while Brian and I ran out to the local market for a variety of last-minute items – roses & baby’s breath, flour, ladles, saffron, a few electronic gadgets to make life easier – and had a great time at the market trying to make these unusual requests understandable to non-English-speakers. Lots of pointing and gesturing. Believe it or not, the easiest thing to communicate was electronic equipment. We had a difficult time figuring out flour (mehl) and chives (schnittlauche) in German, but thanks to our PDAs, wireless connections, and BabelFish, were able to get nearly everything we needed.

After another run or two to the shops (as new items were discovered) – thankfully the shops are within a couple minutes of our preparation area – we got rolling. Brian chopped lots of vegetables and did assorted assistant duties (as assigned) while I managed the electronics including getting pictures from the cameras up on the gallery and writing articles.

Tasks for the chefs today included spending a lot of time poaching vegetables, making croquettes out of various proteins, making crackers for garnish, lots of precision knife-work, made and cut polenta cakes, preparing aspic, and fried off miniature “sausages” wrapped in caul fat.

To answer a question from email (remember that you can comment on any article in this category and we’ll make sure the chefs see everything you send), we cannot reveal the menus we’re using in the competition at this point. The full menus will be revealed after we compete and are judged.

Yesterday, we worked during the day and into the evening with Chef Greg Skibinski as he prepared his Category B entry. According to Chef Skibinski, we’re in really good shape with most of the preparation finished for his presentation, which gets judged on Wednesday.

Today, is the push for Chef Skibinski to finalize his presentation, get the items sliced and coated in aspic, and plated.

Around the hotel, teams from other countries have been competing. The sugar artist who shared our workspace – Stefan – was disappointed again after his mostly-finished sugar sculpture was damaged in transit from Canada. He worked valiantly and tirelessly to re-create his sugar sculpture here in Germany only to have his piece toppled at the convention by his tablemate who accidentally bumped their table. Stefan was amazingly relaxed about the experience – at least to us. The swiss military team took gold in their first event – congratulations! The South Korean team has been seemingly everywhere as they work to get their presentation finalized.

This morning, Brian and I will provide assistance anywhere it is necessary – finalizing printed menus, preparation work, errands, etc.

More updates to follow…