Doing the SALSA!

Anyone who has played any sport with me knows I have a good time, and when we’re losing, I’m still having a good time talking smack or cracking jokes. I’m a champion at talking.

When I was birthing my babies, the nurse told me to not make any verbal noise while pushing. Something about something using all your energy to bear down and push and not expending any on things like, talking, moaning, or screaming…blah blah blah. So, after one push of me not making any noise, it turns out that my body is so conditioned, so well-trained to express myself that when my push was over, the nurse retracted her initial request, “Uh, you can go ahead and talk or make your noise. I’ve never seen anything like it, but you push better while talking through it.” Yes, thank you for telling me what I already knew. Now, let’s talk about our feelings and get these babies out NOW! I pushed, I groaned, I cracked a few jokes and before you could say, “Are you sure you want to have kids with me?”, They were out. I’ve said it before, and I’ll site it again, if birthing babies were an Olympic sport, I’d totally have the gold.

Add in my communication “skills”, my love for cooking, and my competitiveness you’ve got yourself a pretty interesting match. So, you can imagine my excitement when it was announced at our gym that they were having a salsa competition. Salsa RECIPE competition, not dancing competition. Oh lawdy, me in a salsa dance competition? I pity the fool who’d agree to be my partner. Whew! However, everyone was safe, because it was a recipe competition. Make a salsa, bring it up, come have drinks on the patio, we’ll all vote, and I’ll win. No problem. I had some tomatoes from my tomato plant and momma smelled a winner! So, I signed up.

It might be a good time to mention that I have no green thumb. I chose to plant a tomato plant with the kids. You know, prepare them for failure at an early age. However, the plant grew into this monstrosity. It was huge, we put a tomato cage thingy around it, it grew some more. We put a little wooden stake in to hold it up further, it bent over and pulled it out. So we hammered in a 1x4, you know, built a mini fence to harbor the mammoth tomatoe plant. I took pictures and sent them to my family because I knew that no one would believe me.

And so it was, the huge plant of tomatoes. With that, it’s good to point out that the damn things never ripened. A bunch of green tomatoes. And hark, there it is, the winner of the “Most Original” recipe for the best salsa ever. I’m a shoe-in. I experimented, had my guinea pigs, Ricardo and his co-worker, Rust, taste it, they swore it rocked their world. And so be it. I must go forth and rock others’ worlds.

So, I did it. My online girlfriend (HOLLA!) showed up to support me in my shining moment when I win.

As seen here:

I tasted all of my competitor's salsas, some were good. But I was so going to win this one. The contest was: you can go vote if you showed up. 90% of the attendance was gym employees off-duty. So, you can imagine my surprised when THE PILATES INSTRUCTOR won most original for a mango salsa she also won with last year. Okay, A), mango salsa is soooooo 1990’s and 2) if she won with it last year, then that doesn’t make it ORIGINAL, now does it?

This is my very validated reaction. Julz made me take this picture. I think it speaks for itself:

It’s so rigged. If she wasn’t a pilates instructor, I’d so scrap her in the parking lot. Sigh.
That’s how I roll.