Welcome back to the reality-show live blog that's both non-vegan and nothing-intolerant. Here, you can post meaty, cheesy or seedy comments to your heart's content.

Yours truly is vacationing in Maine this week – in a town called Pemaquid, which I think is a Native American word meaning "land of little Internet" (but it may also mean "land of few cable stations" — there are many translations). So I may not be able to join the festivities tonight. But I figure I should give it a shot, so I'm about to head off in search of a neighbor's Wi-Fi signal to pirate. Before I do, though, let me quickly share these highlights from last week's live blog:

* Commenter Big Poppa tried to cook pears in an Easy-Bake oven, and set fire to the house. (I think was a childhood memory, not something that actually happened during the live blog.)
* Anita Lo learned a valuable lesson: You don't bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don't bring soup to a burger contest.
* The judges uttered inanities like "a journey into meatless cooking" and "a comforting bowl of yumminess." Tom, Padma, Gail … where are you?
 * Chef Fart finally dissipated from the air.
* Commenter la can aptly summed up Zooey Deschanel's diet as "turf and turf."

And here are a few things for live-bloggers watch out for tonight (with any luck, I'll see them too):

* The quickfire challenge will be a blindfold taste test, and in the preview clips, the chefs looked very unhappy about that. (I can't say I blame them — my older brothers gave me a blindfold taste test once when I was 10, and it's an experience I never want to live through again.)
* Twelve non-master cheftestants of the past will return — in all their in all their insecure, blustering and graspingly ambitious glory — to remind us all why the quasi talented young newbies are so much more entertaining than the blasé talented old masters.
* We'll see ex-contestant Dale Talde get all up in Michael Chiarello's face, asking "whatcha gonna do about it?" — and then hear Fishballs tell us: "For the first 20 years of my career I used to eat three Dales for breakfast." So I guess that answers Dale's question: Fishballs is going to eat him. (Talk about getting served!)

I forgot to post a "spoiler alert" on that cannibalism thing, sorry. Anyway, it's almost 10 pm Eastern — time to limber up those live-blogging fingers! (And remember to get them extra-limber next week, because we'll have two shows to cover then: The Top Chef Las Vegas premiere at 9, followed by the Top Chef Masters finale at 10. So you might want to start doing finger-calisthenics or something.)

- MisterHippity