New Five Year Plan

Well I found out that the winner of the annual Pillsbury bake-off gets A MILLION DOLLARS and now my life is ruined. Today I am grocery shopping and I am going to buy every product they have with the doughboy on it and force feed my over the top creations to my roommate until I make it, sliding in on a stick of butter leaving a glorious sugar trail, to the competition in Dallas.

Here's how it works. There are seven categories including crap ones like Mexican Favorites, which never get the grand prize, and one sponsored by GE that I totally don't understand. To get to the competition, you have to be one of one hundred finalists in your category and that admission is based on your recipe alone. Once there, you get three hours to make three versions of your recipe and then you pick one to present to the judges for tasting. Each category winner gets 5,000 dollars and then of those seven people, one person gets a MILLION DOLLAR prize. This year's winner, Carolyn Gurtz, was from the peanut butter category:

Her recipe includes chunky peanut butter, sifted flour, MSG, angel tears, and white guilt.

Carolyn Gurtz has probably been entering and winning competitions like this one since before I was born so I already know that I have hurdles to overcome.

But then I remembered that I once met Mr. Pillsbury himself.

The circumstances of my meeting him are another post entirely, but he has a house in Wayzata which is filled with little embroidered pillows that say things like "happiness is marrying your best friend". He also has major eye boogers. But that whole house just makes you want to die it's so flippin' cute. Mrs. Pillsbury, who is still really a stylish and sassy old lady, has a bath in her home office and it is surrounded with pictures of her children and grandchildren. She has a little greenhouse full of orchids and at some point the two of them purchased a questionable metal sculpture from their son's artist friend and plunked it in their gorgeous front yard. They are one of the original Minneapolis power couples. I tibbled from my glass of wine and had the following exchange with Mr. Pillsbury:

MP: "So you're a Smithie are you?"
Me: "Actually no, I went to school in Iowa. I went to Luther."
MP: "So you know old Westie Noble do you?"
Me: "Well not so much personally but sometimes I see him picking up trash around campus using a fifty dollar bill as a glove."
MP (unfazed): "Now what do you do?"
Me: " I uh...welll-"
MP (grandly): "My family was in the flour business."

Yes Mr. Pillsbury, I hear it was quite the racket. Now give me a cool mill for my Orange Dreamsicle Crescent Roll Nut Delights so I can pay off my student loans and the debts of my family, buy myself a modest home and then an amazing cabin, and put the rest into an aggressive growth mutual fund.