While this may not be news to those that know me, Dear Reader, I am a bit competitive. The Foodie Blogroll, a great resource site for food bloggers looking to network and monetize their blogs, holds several contests every month in conjunction with various sponsors. Their latest contest really sounds intriguing so I decided to give it a whirl.
Step 1.
Write a blog post answering these questions by November 5th, 2010:
- Why do you want to compete in this challenge?
- Limitations of time/space notwithstanding, whose kitchen would you like to spend the day in & why? Julia Child, Thomas Keller, Ferran Adria, James Beard, Marie-Antoine Careme, or The Swedish Chef?
- What morsel are you most likely to swipe from family & friends’ plates when they aren’t looking?
- Sum your childhood up in one meal.
- The one mainstream food you can’t stand?
A desire to compete as a personal challenge to my creativity is the initial reason I want to participate but also because the first prize is a $200 gift card to Marx Foods. They have 11 categories listed for truffles alone! So we are going with creativity as first choice for reason to compete but Kurobuta pork and uni by mail order are a close second.
Julia Childs would absolutely be my fantasy chef for the day. I learned to love cooking as so many others did in front of their PBS station on Saturday afternoons while watching the indomitable Childs explain the difference between a hen and a pullet, demonstrate the perfect omelette, and manage to make tripe look appetizing. She brought European cooking to middle America, not by dumbing it down but explaining and demonstrating in clear and precise steps. She also helped develop the food television medium as a way to share what she loved, much as bloggers are doing with the internet now. All with pearls and a smile.
My favortie morsels to swipe would be off the dessert plate. A bit of icing here, a dab of whipped cream there, perhaps a stray berry or two. Who am I kidding? I call it “quality control” but I think I may have a real problem. My name is Christy and I am a dessertaholic.
I was raised by a mom that had a full time job, a part time job, and three kids including one with special needs. Although her mother was a fabulous cook, it never really was my mom’s thing. We never went hungry but meals were more likely to be frozen foods than made from scratch. A constant comfort food came in the red and white can made even more famous in 60′s pop art, Campbell’s Soup. It was my mother’s secret sauce in a variety of casseroles that I still crave on occasion. But the meal I recall most vividly was a steaming bowl of tomato soup- made with water, not milk as some misinformed chefs vainly attempt to improve on a masterpiece. Of course tomato soup must come with grilled cheese. Oh, I’ve had the fancy, tarted up grilled sleazus like Gruyere and Stilton on walnut bread with the thinnest smear of fig compote. The grilled cheese-us of my childhood was simple white bread toasted on the griddle with a molten hot lava flow of processed cheese food in the middle. You could not eat it straight out of the pan or you would likely suffer a severe burn to the roof of your mouth or a napalm dribble down your chin. Tomato soup and grilled cheese on a gray drizzly day when I was feeling sick. Tomato soup and grilled cheese on summer afternoons when I was starving after morning swimming lessons. Tomato soup and grilled cheese was the first meal I learned to cook for myself. All that I cook now started there.
The only mainstream food that I can think of that I cannot stand are green peppers. I really like the red, orange, or yellow varieties but I despise the green ones.
Well, there you go. Answers to questions posted. I figured out how to post the contest badge to my blogs footer. Now I cross my fingers that I get the golden mystery box to create something yummy with. Fingers crossed!
Marla Camp is on of my favorite foodie people and the amazing editor of Edible Austin. Here is the news of her latest accolades:
Why have I never heard of this before? I love meat. I love fried things. I love using yard tools for cooking utensils. 
Here is the essay I recently entered at 
My boss asked me the other day to send him a list of local farmers market. Even the Republicans are going local! OK, granted, this is Austin, notorious for its liberal leanings, so maybe the Hippies have gotten to him. But hopefully it is because even more mainstream consumers are seeing that the local movement makes sense.
