For some people the name Pillsbury brings to mind a chunky little Doughboy character. For others, cold, hard cash—or at least the hope of cash. One million dollars, to be precise, up for grabs each year in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Now a former contest winner has penned a book, The Ungarnished Truth, about her experience winning the mother lode of cooking contests in 1998, with her recipe for salsa couscous chicken.
A book that could have been humdrum and housewifely instead sounds rather intriguing. The author is a former software designer who sussed out the theory behind the contest, as well as the cooking involved. She looked at it as a puzzle, she says in an interview with Rebekah Denn in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She “approached entries as projects to design, or codes to crack.”
Perhaps others will take notes and try to crack the code as well.
Here’s a new cooking contest. Actually, there’s very little cooking involved and the prize is $25,000 for the best sandwich. Go to http://www.mezzetta.com for more info.