'Hoos Top Chef: Jessica O'Shoney

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Question: What team were you on?
O’Shoney: The orange team

Question: What dish did you prepare?
O’Shoney: Grilled vegetable and pineapple kabobs, shrimp and black bean chili over brown rice with chocolate covered strawberries and bananas for dessert.

Question: Why did you choose to prepare that?
O’Shoney: It is a delicious, healthy and well-rounded meal that we were sure everyone would enjoy.

Question: How much planning was involved in preparing it?
O’Shoney: Not much. The shopping list and figuring out how much to prepare to cook in order to be sure we had enough food for everyone is what took the most planning.

Question: What did you have to shop for as you were thinking of preparing for that meal?
O’Shoney: We needed a lot of colorful veggies for the kabobs as well as the chili, so we spent most of our time in the fruit/vegetable section.

Question: What role did the nutritionist play?
O’Shoney: Randy laid out the rules/guidelines for us at the beginning of the competition then kind of sat back and watched the events unfold during the rest of the competition.

Question: Who were the judges?
O’Shoney: Randy, the Vice-Mayor and our new assistant coach Jenny

Question: What did they have to say about your meal?
O’Shoney: Our rice was terribly undercooked, we started cooking it wayyy too late and unfortunately that didn’t turn out so well for our team.

Question: If you had to do it all over again, what would you change?
O’Shoney: Definitely start cooking the rice sooner!

Question: Overall, what did you think of this year’s event?
O’Shoney: I thought the food this year was a ton better than it had been in years past, but it’s always so much fun. There’s a lot of healthy rivalry going on between the two teams.

Question: How was it different from years past?
O’Shoney: This year, we did the cooking at apartments rather than at the Residence Inn, which was so much more convenient because the hotel has very limited amounts of cooking supplies.