beginner's luck

I've learned that the Dutch love to cook. And being at a Christian Reformed Church, surrounded by Dutch people (mostly born in this country), I've learned that I really like their cooking. But there's one thing that's disappointed me--they find something they're good at and they stick to it, rarely venturing away from their recipe. So imagine my surprise when out of the twenty-or-so entries to our church's annual chili cook-off, my name got called for the People's Choice award. I fashioned a type of middle eastern chicken chili (which I unsuccessfully attempted to steal from Aladdin's on High St. last time we were in Columbus) with lots of foreign spices--foreign to my fellow Dutch cooks, anyway. And for some reason they voted for it, though it didn't look, smell, or taste like "normal" chili. Just goes to show: Even blind ducks have to quack some time. Or they freeze to death in the cold, cold river during winter. And that's just sad. The End.