No. 1 salad maker baby

(This ain't no bag salad: Tonya Jameson hooking up the buffalo chicken salad in the clubhouse.)

Okay, I wasn't that great but at least Chef Lou Piuggi didn't kick me out of the kitchen in the Quail Hollow clubhouse. If you eat the buffalo chicken salad at the tournament today, chances are I hooked it up for you. I put my foot in it. (Not really health inspector people, that's just a term for saying a I did a good job.)

Actually, the real cooks did all the work, I simply dumped the salad onto the platters and tried to make it look pretty. It wasn't easy. I had to pile the salad just right so it didn't fall on the tomatoes grimacing the outside of the platter, but I couldn't mold the salad because it needed to look natural. Plus, I had to be careful not to touch my salad plastered fingers on the edge of the platter because it would take more time to wipe the edges off. All this to the soundtrack of clanging pots and loud-talking staffers. (Note: Chef Lou doesn't yell, he talks loudly.) Chef Lou was like the Phil Jackson of the kitchen, imploring me to relax. Apparently, I was gritting my teeth and holding lettuce in a death grip. At home I empty the lettuce mixture from the bag into a bowl and in the words of Chef Emeril "Bam!"

After my salad-making adventure I chopped pineapples with a knife that my Wal-Mart steak knife look like that little blade in a grooming kit. Chef Lou schooled me on the art of cutting. I thought I knew how to work a knife since I'd recently watched "Kill Bill." Chef Lou showed me how to relax my wrist and coax the knife through the pineapple instead of forcing it. "There is no knife," I mumbled to myself.