Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

I rarely win contests of chance.

When I was nine or ten, I went to the elementary school carnival and won the cake-and-book walk a few times...because I was one of like four kids competing and I did it like ten times. I won My Side of the Mountain, The Search for Delicious, and some baked goods to eat while I read them.

When I graduated from high school, they had a bunch of drawings at our all-night party. Everyone who participated won several items from the drawings. But even though I knew everybody won something, I was still thrilled with my prizes. I loved them. I felt like some great honor had been bestowed upon me.

However, these are the exceptions. I've been in a million drawings and a million other contests of chance over my twenty-x years, but I've only won things a few times. Once I was in a drawing with only two other people and lost.

You may be thinking, "Oh, that's how it is with everybody!" But I know some people who, I swear, win every contest they enter. The Chess Master used to win galoots of prizes in the drawings at the assemblies that marked the end of each year of junior high, while I didn’t win a thing.

The good news is that if the Hunger Games were a real thing, my name would never be drawn.

A few weeks ago, my roommates and I went to the State Fair. We ate ice cream and visited the Seamstress’s prize-winning jean quilt. We looked at handmade crafts and commercialized products. Pepper bought root beer and fried clams. The man at the fried clams stand tried to convert the Seamstress to clam chowder by giving her a free sample. The Seamstress politely tried it, then gave me the rest.

On our way out of the fair, we passed a Saladmaster booth. The ladies at said booth asked us if we wanted to enter a contest to win a free dinner.

We were like, “Please explain more.”

And they were like, “If you write your names, ages, and professions on these pieces of paper, you can spin this wheel. The wheel will land on a type of cookware. We will write down that cookware and then put your pieces of paper in a drawing. If your piece of paper is drawn, you will win a dinner and the cookware chosen by the wheel.”

We felt this seemed like a decent system, neither too invasive nor too good to be true. So we all filled out a piece of paper and spun the magical wheel of cookware.

If I recall correctly, Pepper and I landed on serving spoons, while the Seamstress landed on a set of knives. The Saladmaster ladies wrote down these items and promised that if one of us won, they’d let us know.

We went home and promptly forget about the whole thing.

Well, a few weeks later, I received a call from one of the Saladmaster ladies. She said that I’d won a free dinner!

I was all kinds of excited because free dinner!

LADY: You also won a serving spoon!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Hooray!

The lady proceeded to tell me about the dinner that I’d won.

LADY: It’s a dinner show.

Sorry, dinner show.

LADY: Do you like fried chicken? We’re going to make you fried chicken without cooking it in oils or grease!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: That sounds impossible, but cool!

LADY: And diabetic-friendly mashed potatoes!

AWKWARD MORMON: Ooh!

LADY: They’re really yummy!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I’d take your word for it, but I guess I won’t have to!

LADY: And a vegetable medley!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Great! Vegetables!

We arranged for this exciting dinner to take place on a Thursday night.

Then, when I hung up, something occurred to me. When the lady said, “dinner show,” she didn’t mean a waterfront diving spectacular like they used to have at the lovely restaurant called the Mayan before its unfortunate closure. Or even dinner theatre, which I have enjoyed both here in Hometown and in places as far away as Kauai. She meant, “showing off Saladmaster stuff and convincing you to buy it.”

I’ve been to similar events before, such as Mary Kay parties. It’s always a little uncomfortable if you don’t want to buy anything, but it’s still fun. So I decided to go ahead with the dinner, pressure to purchase notwithstanding.

So that Thursday night, my roommates and I awaited the arrival of our Salad Master. (My father also waited with us, just to make sure that we weren’t willfully letting an axe murderer into our home.) Once our Salad Master had arrived, my father gave his stamp of non-axe-murderer approval. He left, and the dinner began.

Like many companies’ sales teams, Saladmaster’s representatives have a prescribed dialogue that they use to share their message. I will freely admit up front that I didn’t buy into their dialogue. I also found their business model curious. Even though Saladmaster is operating under the same principles as Mary Kay, the sales process felt a lot different than Mary Kay’s. I think this is because some of Mary Kay’s products meet needs I already have. They have superior eye makeup remover and they used to sell a great face wash. At the last Mary Kay party I went to, I even ended up buying a bottle of a new lightweight foundation because it was way better and easier to use than the foundation I had.

Saladmaster’s business, on the other hand, relies on convincing people that their cookware is adversely affecting their health. They essentially have to create the need. And if they manage to create the need, then they have to complete a second step, which is to convince people that their product is the answer to this need. I feel like this isn’t as effective.

Of course, I am not a businessperson by any means, so let’s leave off talking about the business model. What I really want to share with you is the experience of the Saladmaster cooking process, which I found endlessly fascinating.

First, the Salad Master started cooking the chicken. And guess what? She really did cook it without putting it in any oil or grease! She put the chicken in an electric skillet with some oil in a container underneath the skillet. The oil created heat that fried the chicken in its own fat.

Then she used the eponymous Saladmaster machine to grate some potatoes and onions, which she put in a pot that, like the skillet, operated as sort of a double boiler.

Before preparing the food, the Salad Master had shared with us Saladmaster’s theories about not peeling food, not cooking it at high temperatures, not cooking it with additional oils, nor cooking it with water. I could tell that some of these theories didn’t sit well with the Seamstress. So when the Salad Master put the potatoes on the stove to cook, the Seamstress brought out her Amazing Snark.

Most people have an Amazing Snark, but the Seamstress’s is more amazing than most. An exchange along these lines ensued:

THE SEAMSTRESS: So basically, you’re steaming the potatoes.

SALAD MASTER: No, because I’m cooking it at such a low temperature that there’s no steam.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (trying to be diplomatic) So it’s like you’re steaming them, but you’re just… not… steaming them.

SALAD MASTER: No, I’m not steaming them.

After this productive conversation, the Salad Master began the vegetable medley. She grated carrots and cabbage and put them in a pot with frozen peas and corn. Interestingly, she did not mix them together. I think she said this would allow them to better retain their individual flavors.

After that, the Salad Master began to make us a cake! I had not known that cake was involved. Cake is almost never a bad thing.

First, the Salad Master put half a box of chocolate cake mix into a bowl. So far, so good.

Then she started grating zucchini into the cake. And carrots. And red cabbage. And radishes.

I was having a hard time trusting this cake.

Then the Salad Master went to our fridge and grabbed ketchup and mustard to put into the cake.

THE THREE OF US: What are you doing??? Is this necessary?

SALAD MASTER: Trust me, you won’t be able to taste a thing!

THE THREE OF US: But why are you doing this to the cake???

Some eggs went into the cake, and then the cake went into a pan on the stove.

Finally, the Salad Master grated more radishes, cabbage, carrots, celery, and zucchini together with some lemon zest to make a coleslaw. Instead of making coleslaw sauce, she squeezed lemon juice on top.

When everything was ready, we ate.

How was the special food? The fried chicken was quite good! The potatoes really needed some kind of seasoning or dairy. I did not care for them. The cole slaw was better than average, the vegetable medley tasted like vegetables, and the cake tasted like cake in spite of the vegetables and condiments. (Although we never did get a satisfactory answer for why she added the condiments in the first place.)

As you may have suspected, while we appreciated the dinner, neither my roommates nor I bought anything from Saladmaster. The only thing I was interested in was the skillet with the oil underneath, and it was very very pricey.

However, I did get my free serving spoon. It’s beautiful, and I love it. And since the Salad Master kept emphasizing that the Saladmaster cookware is made of titanium, the purest of metals, I suspect the spoon is also titanium.

THE SEAMSTRESS: (with Amazing Snark) You could just hold the spoon over the stove and cook something in that!