Picture This: A Photo of Your Crappy Cooking Could Get You a Really Good Meal

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my experiment with The Walk-in Cookbook, which was pretty disappointing. The difference between using their “service” and walking into a grocery store with a recipe open on your smartphone is pretty minimal: instead of walking up and down a few aisles in a regular store, the stuff you need is in one little pile at The Walk-in Cookbook, and the recipe WiC (I just made that up! Jaunty! Less typing!) provides you includes no measurements. If you’re so helpful, CHOP THE ONIONS FOR ME. 

I promised to give them another shot, which I did – vegan chili -- without much improvement from the previous outing. I learned a bit from my mistakes – or rather, their mistakes, if I can pass the buck. Like, don’t blindly double the recipe, so I didn’t even take the two giant onions I was entitled to, because I knew one would be sufficient (also known as paying for something I didn’t acquire). And in a lightbulb moment of common sense, I didn’t dump in both plump packets of chili powder.

Now The Walk-in Cookbook is launching a photo contest on their FB page with a pretty kick-ass first prize --  dinner for four at al di La. As it so happens, I took a pic of one of the dishes I made (see above). But not as celebration of my success, or to put in my cooking brag book (I don’t actually have one of those), but to document the watery dish of blah that my endeavor yielded. I had half a mind to send it to them and complain, but I lost interest/forgot/am lazy.

Could steamed Bouchot mussels, malfatti, saltimbocca romana, and Torta di pere e cioccolato at al di La for me and three strangers who bribe me lucky friends be in my future if I submit my photo?

WiC is also rolling out a charitable initiative: cooking classes, field trips, lectures, all to raise awareness about, and funds for, CHiPs (a laudable organization that runs a soup kitchen and women’s shelter). Part of the series of events is a featured recipe from al di La itself, the sale of which also benefits CHiPS. Sorry, but fuck that! That’s what restaurants are for, to cook the food and put it on a plate and set it before you. And so you can pay someone else to chop that goddamn onion.