Cooking Contest Tip Sheet
A newsletter named Uncommonly Good Cooks seems essential for anybody who’s serious about cooking contests. The eight- to 10-page monthly gives rules, deadlines and prize details of current contests plus winning recipes and tips from winners and judges. You can get a 12-month subscription ($21.95) or sample copy ($2) from P.O. Box 884, Monument, CO 80132-0884. And if you’re really, really serious, you can pay extra and subscribe to an electronic edition with fax and e-mail updates and late-breaking details.
Mean Streets of Yore
About 45 years ago--on May 19, 1953, to be exact--The Times published a story about the contretemps that occurred when Howard S. Johnson, 31, visited Miss Ann Green, 26, in her second-floor apartment on South Union Street, L.A. “He suddenly decided to skip a spaghetti dinner cooked by Miss Green,” wrote the reporter. “But Miss Green objected, locked the door.”
Johnson tried to escape by leaping out the window but missed the tree he was counting on shinnying down. Neighbors found him on the sidewalk and called an ambulance. At the time of the news report, he was resting in California Hospital with a broken leg.
Forget about the Black Dahlia mystery. What on earth was in that spaghetti?
Foodie Fido
The California Department of Food and Agriculture now has eight produce-sniffing dogs, much like the famous marijuana-detecting dogs except that they’re trained to smell for contraband fruits, vegetables and other plant materials. Last year they detected 1,500 parcels entering the state that contained prohibited or restricted produce, 200 of which were infested with insect pests (including 3,500 pounds of fruit fly material) or agricultural diseases.
The reason, obviously, is that it’s a lot easier to keep infectious material out than to eradicate an infestation of the state’s $25-billion agriculture industry once it gets established. University of California economists estimate that controlling a new medfly establishment would cost the state’s taxpayers anything from $493 million to $875 million.
And talking about bargains, how do they get these hounds with the sensitive honkers? They’re free from animal shelters.