Paul McCullough of 'The Next Food Network Star' Gives Us His Perspective On the Ft. Dix Challenge

Paul McCullough is one of the finalists on The Next Food Network Star. He’s still one of my two favorites. This week he teamed up with my other favorite, JAG, but I’ll go over that later in my recap of the episode. But first, I wanted to bring you Paul’s own words about the show:

What a difference Ft. Dix makes especially after last weeks episode that I like to call “The Perils of Paul”. It was so nice to have a show where my friends were not calling to say “Why are you so nervous, just be yourself, you really sucked last week “.it goes on, but I will not bore you. How about we move on to what a fabulous week it was!

The Ft Dix challenge was imposing at first but with all the men in uniform around I relaxed pretty quickly.

MRE Challenge…the 20 minutes flew by. I was watching the others present and for the first time I did not get nervous. I just thought to myself “say what is in your heart and don’t over analyze.” I hit my mark, delivered the goods and in the end, Pauly FINALLY won his first challenge. It was an amazing feeling. What you did not see….This was a frigid day in early February. The hanger was about 40º. We all had thermals on, I’m surprised you did not see our breath as we worked. After that challenge was over we all went outside and despite the cold Rory, Amy and I started running around to burn off some of the extra tension, personally I was just running for joy. Hell I just won my first challenge!! I feel like I really hit my stride.

Next is Soldier Grub. It was a no brainer to pick JAG. He is the most talented chef in our group, plus he’s a marine, and since we are at an army base, I was betting on him being embraced by the soldiers, (not like that). We came up with our menu of meatloaf, veggies and sweet potatoes. Everything was going so smoothly until Jag saw that our oven was DEAD! We only had 30 minutes to serve, so our meatloaf went into the deep fryer. Jag really saved us there. We got our food up and ready to serve. Then it was presentation time. Jag and I went out and rocked the house. I found myself doing push ups. The Troops went crazy. I felt on fire we were having such a great time. What you did not see….we only got 3 meatloaf’s done on time. The rest we had transferred to another (working) oven. But since they were not cooked when the time ran out. We were not allowed to serve them. So now we had the issue of portion control for a lot of hungry men. Fortunately we managed with just one piece to spare. What a relief to be finished with a 15 hour day.

Evaluation It was a really emotional evaluation, everyone cried; I think it was a combination of exhaustion, missing our boyfriends and families, and the mounting pressure of 6 turning to 5. If was a relief to be safe rather than being on the chopping block again. We headed up to wait and see who is going home. In the end Michael Salmon is sent packing. He is great guy, a talented chef. Michael is a smart, funny guy with a huge heart, not the knife toting lunatic you may see in some of the posters.

Next week our guest chef is Alton Brown; if you watch the trailer you know it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Hold on or better yet go to www.myspace.com/nextfoodnetworkstarpaul. and sign up to be my friend. If you already have thank you very much. Also check out www.foodnetwork.com/star for more video clips and a sneak peak of what’s in store for the final 5.

So it is now down to 5…..3 guys and 2 girls….Who’s a threat, who’s rising to the top of the pot?
Thanks for your support! Paul McCullough

So folks, you can all help Paul out. Food Network has a MySpace site and is running a little contest among the show contestants for the most "friends." Here’s that site. Be sure to "friend" Paul!

And if you want Paul’s regular MySpace address, here it is.

Be sure to come back here later to get my recap and to share your thoughts on the show!

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