Monday, March 28, 2011

United Way Chili Cookoff II: Salvation

The time has come again. The invitations have been issued, and the challengers have gathered. Each will have a unique opportunity to demonstrate courage, skill, and endurance in the most grueling type of competition ever devised by man: the Chili Cookoff.

Where I work, this happens once a year. It's part of our annual fundraising for the United Way. For the past couple of years, I've been recruited to be one of the Chili Cooks.

You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now, but apparently not. My wife, however, has. So, this year, in the interest of saving lives and preserving sanity, she offered (in that particular use of the word "offer" that you most often see in the context of, say, Mob enforcers or tax collectors) to cook the chili for me.

I did not refuse. Mainly because, well, it wasn't that sort of offer.

So this year I will bring a crock pot full of safe, filling, wholesome - but still very garlicky - chili to the cookoff. The victims participants may consider this my wife's apology for the nightmarish catastrophes that I have inflicted on them in previous years.

I still don't hold with using these newfangled "recipes" when you're cooking, though.

5 comments:

  1. Recipes are for people who read instructions. What is wrong with those people? Who has the time to learn how to do somethign right when you can just do it wrong faster and eventually have someone else do it for you?

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  2. I think recipes are for people who lack Artistic Vision, myself.

    On the plus side, I now have an empty crock pot in the back of my car. You say "food" to these people, and they descend like a plague of ravenous, chili-devouring locusts.

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  3. My turn Michael Mock! ::snerk:: What is with men and directions, instructions, recipes??? I don't get it. Okay, maybe that was a bit sexist. But it's true! Artistic Vision can aaaddd to recipes. You can improvise, sure. But the basic recipe is there for a reason.

    All that said, unless I'm baking a cake I rarely use a recipe. :-)

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  4. Directions? Instructions? Recipes?

    Bah. We don't believe in 'em. They're for the weak.

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  5. I think I now have a better understanding of why experiments in the lab of the mad scientist have outcomes of Michael Mock's hair no longer on his head, wiggling around on the floor. LOL!

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