SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.: NOTHIN' SAYS LOVIN' LIKE<br>SIDE SALAD NEAR SOME OVENS

March 25, 2006

NOTHIN' SAYS LOVIN' LIKE
SIDE SALAD NEAR SOME OVENS

So I spent the better part of the week covering the 42nd Pillsbury Bake-Off in Orlando. You can read the story I wrote by clicking here. There's a photo gallery I contributed to as well.

What was it like?

Think NASCAR-level commercialism + Food Network-level creative frenzy + "Stepford Wives" creepiness.

I particularly liked this scene, repeated 99 times. Every time a dish was taken to the judges for consideration, it got an escort from someone who looked like they worked at Best Buy to make sure no one accidentally got in the way of a contestant and spilled a plate.

As you can see, it didn't exactly work on this TV crew. They merely ignored the threatening visage that khakis, a baby-blue Polo pullover and a neck lanyard can impose.

Digressive rhetorical question: Why is it that any time there's something worthy of video documentation, news crews endowed with cameras stronger than the Hubble Telescope insist on being 3 inches from whatever it is they're trying to videotape?

I so enjoy this phenomenon.

I remember covering the Iditarod in 1991 and being, literally, in the middle of Possum Ass, Alaska. There's no one anywhere in the vicinity of us for, say, 4,000 miles. Anyway, I'm interviewing a Russian musher as he's trying to feed his dogs and bed them down for a nap.

All of a sudden, a white helicopter comes buzzing over us, lands about 20 yards away, blows snow all over us, wakes the dogs, topples the sled, scatters their food. The whole ball of wax.

A camera crew - shooter, boom mike, producers, alleged reporter - come running from the copter ready to make some TV magic. They trudge over to where I'm doing my interview. But they don't care. As I'm asking a question in the middle of Possum Ass, Camera Dick gets, I swear, 4 centimeters away from this guy's face. In the process, I'm physically pushed out of the way, as if this is a hockey puck and I'm being checked against the boards in the corner.

Nikolai, the musher, is tired. He's been hallucinating for three nights on the trail due to lack of sleep. He thinks the trees are singing Russian love songs to him. It's minus-10 out. He's in Possum Ass, many thousands of miles away from his freshly liberated Russian province. And now Mike Love in a day-glo ABC Sports hat is trying to do a video colo-rectal job on him.

"Uh," I say to "reporter" Jack Arute. "Could you get the fuck out of my interview?"

Arute ignores me. Mike Love ignores me. In fact, he pushes in closer.

"We'll be done in a minute,''' Arute says.

I stand there. I wait. They interview the musher. They take off in their pretty helicopter. (Note to TV pricks: white helicopters in the winter in Alaska = bad idea. No one can find you for 8 months when you lose a tail rotar. And, just so you know, rescue searchers don't exert a lot of effort to look for TV people. You get, like, 45 minutes of search time, tops.)

Anyway, the Russian musher, fatigued from this bullshit cowboy parachute interview, says he's too tired to talk. "Imuzputbootyondogz,'' he says. Great. Thanks, guys.

Turns out, the ABC guys were staying at the same boarding house I was. I have no idea how it happened, but all the network hats and shirts and buttons and badges they had been using to hit on lonely village women suddenly disappeared. Oh, and their toothbrushes smelled like the under side of a toilet seat all of a sudden when they got back from flying around one afternoon.

Amazing thing, that karma.

Okay, I went back and re-read the post and I have to say the Stepford comment was a bit harsh. Only a handful of the 99 finalists were like that. I met many a lovely person there who was passionate about food and who had some perspective and good humor. Like Rebecca Nurse, above, of Waterford, Pa. She's a yoga instructor who made a healthy, tasty Cinnamon-Fruit Snack Mix. She jumped in to calm one overexcited contestant with some emergency deep-breathing techniques. ("I told her, 'Go to the river... go to the river...'") She told me that if she had won, she was going to take one of her girlfriends to Vegas. Her friend's son has leukemia and the mom needs a vacation from the stress.

What did winner Anna Ginsberg say she wanted to buy with her $1 million prize? A bounce house for her 4-year-old daughter.

Jenny Flake of Gilbert, Az., was a sweetheart, too. She made Toasted Mexi-Meatball Hoagies. She's holding up the charm bracelet she wears. Each time she's made it to a cooking contest final, she buys a charm.

Jenny wears a lot of charms.

Then there was Sita Lepczyk Williams of Blacksburg, Va., who was making Black Bean-Chorizo Soup in Tortilla Bowls.

Sita is a bank teller and a silversmith and she made the shamrock necklace she was wearing for good luck.

She also made a ring that was supposed to represent the dish she was making.

See, the black jewel is the black bean and the green one is the green chile and the swirls are steam rising from the skillet and the... oh nevermind.

There were a few people I met that I wouldn't let near a set of potholders, much less give access to electrical kitchen machinery. And not every dish looked or tasted appetizing.