Recipe Contest Voting...Yay or Nay?

Might as well just jump into this hot and sticky topic. 

 

I’m referring to voting contests.  And for the record, I’m referring to voting for recipe or cooking contests.  So please, let’s not bring up Al Gore, k?

It’s a rapidly growing trend within the cooking/recipe writing community, one that sponsors have discovered as a way to drive internet traffic to their product website or Facebook pages.  I understand their motives.  Their marketing departments are paid to come up with avenues to boost page views and interest in their products. 

But it’s a piss poor way for participants in a contest to be judged on the merits of their recipe or cooking skills.  Seriously…just because you have 11,564 Facebook friends, does that make your “Fried Alpo with Cheese Whiz Gravy” the BEST recipe??? 

There are also “voting clubs” that support one another to vote – sort of an “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine”.  As well as numerous software programs that easily gets around the “one vote per computer” rule.  None of these shady voting scams have anything to do with either the recipe submitted or even the product.  It’s just massive scale cheating. 

That’s why I recently declared publicly (well, publicly meaning Facebook…I didn’t send out engraved announcements) that I will not participate in any contest that has voting as the MAIN component of choosing the winner.  I have no problem with participating in a contest where voting is a small part of the contest, as long as the recipe or cooking is judged on its RECIPE merits by at least a semi-professional judge or group of cooking enthusiasts.  I also do not participate in frenzied voting for friends….I MAY consider voting for a friend  if it’s a one-time only deal or seems to have some degree of actual judging involved.  And, also, if this friend sends me booty in the mail. 

BUT JUST DON’T ASK ME.  When I read your recipe and I think it’s

awesome, I’ll vote.    DO NOT ASK ME TO ASK MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY TO VOTE EITHER.   I’m already on a bunch of shit lists for this!   

And I do hope that fat little doughy guy does NOT have voting in the next go around!  The grand prize of $1,000,000 in the Pillsbury Bake-Off is too big and too historic to begin to participate in this nefarious trend of voting. 

When I see incredible cooks and seasoned competitors (Jenn, Michaela, etc., I'm looking at you!) lose out in a contest because a handful of professional cheaters have taken an “interest” in our hobby, it’s pretty disheartening and frustrating.  And even if sponsors in voting contests have taken steps to try and eradicate the cheaters – voting is STILL the most inane way to choose the best recipe. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like my recipe to be judged by an actual person or persons and not chosen by sheer number of “clicks”. 

Discuss…..I’d particularly like to hear suggestions about how to convince sponsors this shit is stupid. 

Oh, and if you are totally into voting and kinda get a buzz posting on everyone's FB wall and mass emailing your second cousins and high school bandmates for votes...well, as long as you don't bug me, we are cool. 

Call of the Wild

First question!  And it’s doozy!  Death.  Drama.  Dinner.  Yay for Laureen!  She obviously knows my affinity for protein brought down by stalking through the forest pretending I’m the heroine out of a Jean Auel novel. 

Oh so many choices…but right now, after surveying the incident in my garden last night, I’m thinking I’d enjoy a nice pressure cooked squirrel.  I have plenty of bigger game in the freezer, and even have a venison roast in the slow cooker right now.  But that bastard with the cute little hands and big brown eyes is squarely on my shit list. 

So how to bring him to justice?  The crimes include three tomato plants (it is a MYTH that rodents do not eat supposedly toxic tomato plants…my squirrel is of the variety that would find comfort in a Fukushima nuclear reactor), marigolds (!), one jalapeno plant (!!), and seven snapdragon plants.  And I’m seeing squirrel tracks amongst the newly transplanted lavender plants.  What the hell???  Lavender??  Is he a decorator with an affinity for bed and breakfast soaps?  

El Bastardo is a wily little rodent…I can’t quite catch him in the act of feasting on my greens.  When I see him out the window, patrolling through the plants, I run outside only to find him perched on the front step, little paws in a prayer position, gazing at me with all the innocence of the five year old Buddhist monk. 

So I think I will not be able to just shoot the little flea infested rat.  Something about shooting a critter that reminds me the stuffed toy my son kept in his crib…it would be…traumatic.  Plus, there’d be no meat left after I blew him to smithereens.   I can’t smash him with a shovel…that’s not really my style.  That’s more the Spousal Unit’s style.  He’s known for his magnificent shovel swing that has brought down many a hapless gopher.  He’s awesome with a great aim.  No, I think I’ll need to do this deed in absentia.  With a freaking big trap. 

I think this will work.  Tough, heavy duty, mounted on a heavy piece of lumber, El Bastardo won’t know what hit him.  Sorry, folks…it has to be done.  My garden hangs in the balance.

  I’m trying to eat more vegetarian, for Pete’s sake. 

Recipe for Squirrel Pot Pie

2 to 4 squirrels  

2 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon parsley flakes

½ teaspoon ground sage

½ bay leaf

12 unbaked biscuits

1.        Pressure cook squirrels until tender.  Take squirrels from broth, reserving broth.  Add water to broth to equal 2 cups liquid.  Remove meat from bones and place meat in 9-inch square baking dish.  Make thin white sauce of flour, butter, and reserved liquid; add salt, parsley, sage, and bay leaf.  Pour sauce over meat; top with biscuits.  Bake in 450 degree oven to 20 to 30 minutes.  Serve steaming hot.  This is a good method preparing squirrels too old to fry.

From:  “The Original Tennessee Homecoming  Cookbook”, recipe contributed by a Mrs. Calvin Borden, obviously a woman with many squirrels in her garden.

Let's do something different...

I just can't read another food/cooking/recipe/chef blog.  Don't get me wrong...some of are incredibly well-written, informative and entertaining.  And written and photographed by some darn talented people who are my friends.    But, seriously...I just can't keep up with the 82,475 of them I try to follow.  My eyes are bloodshot, and I just can't take another recipe for cauliflower panna cotta.  Or pictures of a single seared sea scallop balanced on a perfectly cut square of house made flatbread, piled high with chiffonade of organic moss from the underside of fiddle ferns and dusted with wasp pollen.  I just can't.  I mostly just eat three ordinary meals a day, and there's no way in hell I'll ever cook, bake, poach, fry, grill, preserve, truss, whip, beat, or roast 1/1000th of those recipes.  Ever.

So let's try this idea, based on my abiding love for Dear Abby and starting trouble.  Questions.  About anything at all.  Could be food related, or perhaps you'd like a bit of insight into your jackass boyfriend who takes money out of your purse....those are fun questions.  Or, perhaps your mother-in-law is a smidge of pain in the ass.  Yes, we can discuss cooking...but it has to be....interesting.  Like, why did that jar of pickled eggs explode in the refrigerator?  Or, how do you get duck pate out of your hair?  Or, best of all, let's discuss....recipe contests.  Ah, now I have your attention, because most of you reading this are probably the diligent and willing participants (as I am) in this sponsor driven psychological hobby from hell.  Because you know and I know...we love to yammer on about what's going on, real or imagined, in the cooking contest world. 

Or we could discuss your mother-in-law.  Your call. 

So send me questions or opinions and I'll write up the best of them.  Or I'll just make stuff up and we'll go from there. 

I'm already having fun and it didn't involve 15 pictures of water boiling!