The first cooking contest I qualified for took place on a PBS sound stage. After two days of filming, the only thing I won was the knowledge that I am completely unable to be happy for someone else. How could I be, really? What kind of judge chooses sautéed shrimp dunked in chipotle aioli over cubes of melon doused with Asian fish sauce? So what if my Vietnamese Cantaloupe Salad was "a little sardine-y." That's called experimentation. That's called creativity. Open your minds people. Open them wide.
Since that disappointing weekend, I’ve won $1,000, 52 gallons of Dreyer’s ice cream; a trip to New York City, a Forman grill and a hopeless addiction to cooking contest web sites. I’m blessed with a job that gives me about two minutes of work a week. This means I can spend hours upon hours entering cooking contests. These contests are exactly what my younger sister believes is wrong with America: commercial, plastic, and totally lacking in altruistic grace. But what can I say. I love the prizes. I love the possibility. I love the little spark of life cooking contests bring into my cubicle every day.
This is my chronicle of contest attempts—the cheesy, the exaggerated, the tenderly earnest. My only wish for those of you who read this is, may you one day lead a more exciting life than I do.
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