You're a Shitty Cook. You Need Money. We Can Help.

I don't know if anybody is paying attention to this, but a couple of years ago, Food Network decided that they didn't have to be the "Good and Tasty Food Network," and they'd be content to be the "shows that show you recipes and crazy shit that you'd never want to eat network" so they decided to do things like hire Guy Fieri and green-light shows like The Worst Cook in America.

Lookit.  I bought into this whole "lowest common food denominator programming" when it first arrived on the scene.  Eater (my favorite blog aside from FiPS) ran a contest to promote the Series Premiere of Worst Chefs, and I entered that contest.  And I fucking won that contest.  Because if you're looking for the Worst Chef in America, and you're not limiting it to people who are willing to debase themselves by going on a reality TV show, the Worst Chef probably lives in Ohio and he or she (probably she, if we're including my relatives, and by all means, we should be counting my relatives) is related to me.  See, what I did, there?  It's axiomatic up in here, bitchez!

SO!

If you know someone who is a horrible cook, you should nominate them for this show.  Because they could win cash money.  E-mail them at worstcooksnyc@gmail.com and don't think that it's jinky-janky just because they've got a gmail address--that's how reality tv casting works, these days.  Erase the trace, you know?

But, back to me.  I submitted a story for who I thought was the Worst Cook in America, and this is the story I submitted, in its entirety:

Years ago, I stopped going home for Thanksgiving because no one in my family can cook anything, ever. The trade-off for missing Thanksgiving every year is that I'm pretty much forced to endure my family's Christmas. 

It seems that every couple of years a truly wretched recipe takes hold in my family, spreading among my aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins like a virus. Several years ago, the viral dish of the moment was a dessert called "Cherries in the Snow." 

It was basically a giant bowl of whipped egg whites, cream cheese and white sugar, folded into an entire tub of Cool Whip. The bowl of glop was refrigerated and topped with coconut flakes and maraschino cherries.

On this particular Christmas Eve, one of my aunts badgered me relentlessly about why I didn't try any of her "Cherries in the Snow." I relented, and ate a small serving.

That evening, midway through the midnight church service, the food poisoning hit me full-tilt-boogie. I raced from the pew just as the Christmas sermon was beginning, and stayed by the toilet in the church bathroom for the rest of the service. After everyone else had finished singing "Silent Night" by candlelight and had gone home, I managed to pull myself together. I barely got home before the next wave hit. I've had food poisoning before, but never anything that even remotely approached this. I was so sick that I was unable to get out of bed on Christmas (except for a few brief moments when the sheets I'd soiled had to be changed), and I couldn't hold down solid food until the New Year.

That was my holiday worst. 

Ya.  So, after I submitted that story and won the contest, my mom forwarded the link to Aunt Cynthia (because she was proud that I debased our family in order to win a free meal), and Aunt Cynthia hasn't actually spoken to me since.  So, before you nominate someone for this show, think about the fact that it just might destroy your relationship with your favorite aunt.  Or, another person.  I didn't even know that Aunt Cynthia had the internet.  Old people are sneaky that way.  Consider yourself warned. 

So.  Are you going to nominate someone as the Worst Cook in America?