Dear Ms. Schoemann,
First of all, I would like to thank you for your patronage of Cooking Monthly, America’s leading resource for culinary information and advice. We truly appreciate your interest in our publication, and your obvious devotion to our goal of keeping the kitchen fun and lively.
As you well know, each issue of Cooking Monthly includes a feature known as “Kitchen Quick Tips”—ideas and suggestions for how to improve cooking methods and procedures, which are selected from reader submissions. The editing staff here at Cooking Monthly carefully reviews and considers each submission. That said, we would like to respectfully request that you cease sending us your “Quick Tips”. We appreciate your enthusiasm in this pursuit, but as of this month, none of your seventeen submissions have been remotely viable. A few have the potential to be deadly.
Your observation that ‘microwaving silverware and cutlery helps give your guests a warm and cozy impression during a cold winter meal’ made us wonder how you are still alive. We were surprised that you continued to send us tips after that.
Moreover, our staff can in no way endorse your suggestion to ‘pour breakfast cereal into a thermos and add the milk the night before. When you grab it in the morning, give it several firm shakes, and you’ve got a delicious breakfast beverage.’ Frankly, that idea made one of our editors ill.
While your discovery that a pint of Jack Daniels can be hidden in an oven mitt was certainly inventive, we failed to see how it was a useful cooking tip.
Furthermore, I would like to add that if any members of the Cooking Monthly staff ever attended a dinner party at which the table centerpiece was a roll of paper towels stood on end, wearing a baseball cap, we would leave immediately.
Granted, your ideas and suggestions did cause a stir among our writing staff, and did not go completely unappreciated, in a way. However, enough is enough. Please keep future tips to yourself—or, better yet, submit them to your local precinct. They would be well advised to keep an eye you.
Sincerely,
Harold Blige, Senior Editor
Cooking Monthly
I Heard Tell 