'And your little proviso?' Maya asked.
Like Jade, Amelia chose to just pick up the nearest envelope. Her jaw dropped as her eyes scanned over the words. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times before she managed to get the words out. 'Hands free,' she said at last. 'You must do all of the prep without using your hands.'
'Oh, no, that's not going to end with a clean Amelia, is it?' Maya replied, words dripping with sarcastic sympathy. 'Well, if you'll all take your places in the kitchen, we'll get you set-up and ready to go.'
A quick cut later, and the three contestants were standing in their own sections of the kitchen. From the angle of the camera, Jade was barely visible as a chef's hat just peeking over the worktop. Holly and Amelia stood beside theirs, comically small aprons doing little to hide their colour-coordinated, mesh-trimmed lingerie.
'Alright, if you're all good to go, just one little reminder: make sure to press the buzzers on your worktop if you need help with moving something hot or dangerous. Your stipulations still apply, though. So Amelia, good look pressing the button with your nose and Jade, I hope you can reach from down there, but we're not going to make you move boiling noodles around without your hands so just let us know when you're ready. Otherwise, best of luck to you. The winner is the meal our judged decide look the best, or, more likely, the least awful. We're not going to make anybody eat them, for obvious reasons. You have twenty minutes. Begin!'
Amelia was the first to come to terms with the drawbacks of her stipulation. She had been given the easiest meal -- a packet of already opened instant ramen -- but the most difficult added rule. She leaned over her worktop, giving the camera men a beautiful view of her round arse cheeks and the nearly invisible red thong between them. Biting down on the clump of dried noodles, though, she went too hard on them, accidentally breaking off a piece. It took a couple of attempts to get them between her jaws, where she could finally drop them into a ready-filled pan of water, splashing her face and hair in the process. As she stood upright again, it became obvious that either the worktop was cold or she was enjoying the vulnerable position she had put herself in. Her nipples were plainly erect, jutting through her bra and apron.
Jade looked even more sillier. A cameraman had repositioned behind her, which was lucky for viewers, who were treated to a view of her large but shapely rear-end. Unlucky for Jade, though, who had her every awkward movement inspected in detail. She lifted a packet of instant mash in one hand, then felt around for a pan with the other. She stuck her hand directly into the pan, soaking it, but a bit of cold water was nothing compared fo the mess of the previous round. Next up, she managed to find a glass jug without dunking her hand in it, and a cardboard tube of gravy granuels. Pouring the latter into the former, she felt around for something to stir it with and the show cut to Holly just as Jade began whisking her gravy.
Holly was by far the messiest so far, even if that only meant getting her hands dirty. Again, she had been given a pretty straightforward meal, but the absence of cutlery was soon to bite her. She had gotten the pasta bubbling away nicely, but was now mixing a roux with her bare hands. Half-melted cheese, milk and flower clung to her hands and there wasn't a towel in sight. She quickly realised that getting the texture right was nigh impossible, but with nothing else to do till the pasta was ready, she continued to cringe as she worked the slop with her hands.
Amelia was trying to find ways to make her ramen more interesting while it cooked. She couldn't open any of the ingredients, but had managed to grab an egg between her teeth. She wanted to fry it and serve it as a topping, but even cracking was proving to be difficult. The first one shattered all over the worktop, dousing her chin and chest in yolk in the process. The worst part of this was that she had to lean right over the worktop to get another one, soaking her bra, breasts and torso in the gooey yellow gunk. When she did manage to crack a second egg into a frying pan, half of the shell went in with it, but since she had to assume the others were going to have other similarly ruined meals, she decided it was the best she could do and bent over again in order to turn the heat on.
Similar problems were befalling Jade. She couldn't see what she was doing, and struggled to reach the worktop from her awkward crouching position, so she had spilled plenty of the still-cold water as she tried to whip it into something resembling gravy. The mash was coming together about as nicely as instant mash could, but the gravy was going to be cold and what hadn't spilled had already started to congeal and go lumpy due to Jade's inefficient stirring. Worse still, as far as she was concerned, was the fact that the spillage had flown over the edge and onto her head. It made he gasp in shock and disgust; it felt disgusting and she had been unable to see it coming.
Arguably, Holly was making the closest thing to real food and although the texture of the roux was nothing like it needed to be, it was better than Jade's gravy. Her hands and forearms were coated with sludge by now, but the fresh pasta cooked quickly and she was waiting patiently for it to cool, after one of the greying male judges had emptied it into a colander for her.
Liberally doused in runny egg yolk, Amelia was in the middle of awkwardly using her teeth to turn the off the gas under her egg. She hoped the judges like them runny -- and presumably burnt on the bottom -- but it was the best she could do in the circumstances. She had to lean right over the eggy worktop yet again in order to call a judge now that her noodles had finished, and her still-hard nipples weren't happy about being dunked again. Still, at least she was done in plenty of time, and although it was challenging to grab the frying pan's handle without her hands, she managed to plop the egg down on top of the steaming noodles. It didn't look great, upside-down, but it was something.
Jade was also making do. Inadvertently sticking her hand into the lukewarm mash potato made her shudder, but once she had readjusted, she was able to dump it onto a plate she held in her other hand. She was more careful about feeling around for the gravy, but still recoiled slightly at the lumpy feeling of it against her fingers. Fortunately, she managed not to spill any more, and poured the whole lot onto her mash. She couldn't know how unpleasant it looked, but the cameras made sure the audience knew full well.
Last to finish was Holly. Once her pasta had cooled enough, she had to mix it through the sauce with her bare hands. She shivered a little when she first introduced them to one another, but she was almost used to it by now. The water from the pasta made things move around a little more smoothly, too, and once she was satisfied with how much they'd mingled, she poured the whole concoction into an oven dish. Without thinking, she moved to wipe her gunky hands on an apron she didn't have. She quickly realised her error, but not before she had smeared gooey cheese sauce across her stomach.
