Carve. Slice. Peel. Drop.

Kacie Chatuparisoot (fruits of her labor)
Chef/Owner De Royale, LLC
Boulder, Colo. (Food Network)

Watching this show called Food Challenge on the Food Network...teams of 2 compete with one another in a Fantasy Fruit Sculpture contest. Grand price is $10,000. This competition is about food carving with a tropical theme. The teams have 8 hrs to create an intricate, really spectacular fruit sculpture. 4 teams go head-to-head. Group of 3 Judges. Sounds pretty straight forward right? Here's where it all goes downhill. After hrs of hrs of work, the final part of the competition is to move your fruit sculpture from your work table to the judging table which is...like 4 feet away! So you have a sculpture measuring 4-5ft high, weighing over 100lbs, which you must move (the website says the sculptures weigh upwards of 300lbs--who the hell can lift 300lbs?!). The only women in the competition (see above)--two sweet little Thai ladies, were the first to move their piece. So what do you suppose happened...you guessed it, It dropped, along with their hopes and dreams! Kacie C's assistant, a 4' 8" Thai girl couldn't lift the glorious tower of produce. Sad. I'm convinced they would have won. But i can't help ask myself, WHY?! WHY O' WHY?! WHAT WAS THE POINT OF HAVING TO MOVE YOUR WORK A COUPLE FEET AWAY FROM WHERE IT WAS?! WHAT DOES THAT PROVE?! WHY NOT JUST HAVE THEM HOG-TIED? HOP ON ONE LEG? THIS ISN'T THE WORLDS STRONGEST MAN COMPETITION! Small consolation---the women were allowed 15 minutes to "fix" their piece before official judging. Of course, they couldn't' get it back to the way it was in such a limited time and were essentially disqualified. Tears flowed. Food judges suck. I'm convinced the judges had a anti-Thai bias! I'm seriously thinking about a personal boycott of The Food Network. Who's with me?

The Fruit That Fell
by Celia Moodie

The grass
Flat with fallen fruit
Bruised -
Folded and matted
In your shadow.
Behind your head
With your wild eye
Staring upward
At the mottled light
Of clouds and sun
Through leaves
And branches
You are hungry.
But the fruit is fallen
And you will never
Starve.
So you leave the fruit
Where it will surely rot.
Browning the grass
For another season.

I stand behind another tree
And watch you.
I touch the rough bark
With my cheek.
I am hungry too
But I have eaten that fruit.
Soft and wet in the grass.
Tasting of moss-green
Forest fungus.
I hallucinate from the
Wild forest floor
As I reach for you
My arms extend - retract -
I cannot touch you.
Starved as I am
My body falls
And I sound like a tree
In the woods.

That no one hears
Crash down

(Poems on Life)

(p.s. this poem has nothing to do with fruit and the white guy won)