Those of you who read Endless Simmer regularly know our goal is to provide you with informative, witty and timely posts about eating and the food world. But you may also know our real goal is to eventually sell out to the man. You see, the only thing that convinces us to get out of bed every morning and post religiously is the hope that this thing will really take off and some rich sap caught up in the Web 2.0 bubble will buy us out for millions. Unrealistic perhaps, but do you have a better idea? And don’t say working.

So when gansie got an email out of the blue from an Outback Steakhouse PR flack, offering us a free gift certificate worth $25 in the hopes that we would blog about their fine dining establishment, you can imagine how excited we were. I mean, it’s not exactly a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch or Nick Denton, but every corporate whore has to start somewhere, right?

Of course, half of us just wanted to hop in the car immediately and head to the nearest Outback to devour a greasy and delicious bloomin’ onion followed by a scrumptious thunder from down under brownie ice cream treat. But the half of us with more business sense decided to offer it to you, our loyal readers, as a lure to sign up for our brand new Weekly Simmer email update, promising that the 50th person to sign-up would win the gift card.

Apparently, this may not have been the most enticing prize of all time, as it took us almost two weeks to get to lucky number 50 (and there are about 5 times more people than that in my family, so that’s really not saying much).

Anyways, after much cajoling, we found a lucky winner. Congratulations are in order to Sara from Centreville, Virginia, a loyal ES reader who has promised to regale us with stories of the Centreville dining scene and her kids’ love for Jamaican jerk seasoning. Sara, your prize winnings are in the mail.

Stay tuned to ES for more contests (and yes, the prizes will only get better). For those of you who didn’t sign up because you were afraid of winning the gift card, you’re in the clear now:

Photo: Grow a Brain