IACP Cookbook Awards

There’s nothing like winning a big award to put roses in your cheeks.

I shall never forget the moment I won my first IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) cookbook award. (I confess I wasn’t giving my undivided attention to the announcements. Instead I was busily scarfing down a lovely dessert.)

I looked up in astonishment when I heard my name called from the podium.

“What?! … What was that?”

My chin fell on the table.

As I stumbled to the podium, my life changed with every step. My book was considered the best!

The first Miss. America, Margaret Gorman, 1921

At the time, I was handed a crystal whisk award–and I felt like the first Miss. America, complete with tiarra and roses. Today the award is more like an Olympic medal, worthy of cuddling.

Still today, I have that felling of “What? Me? Surely you jest!”

With that preamble, I urge all of you with new cookbooks and food books–literary, historical, referential, first-time, family-oriented or otherwise–and any who have such aspirations to read the information about the annual IACP cookbook awards and apply.

The deadline for the 2010 IACP Cookbook Award submission is close at hand–October 28, 2009–less than 40 days and nights and counting!

This year, there are 16 categories where your book may fit in. New categories include: Culinary History, Professional and Children, Youth and Family. And there are two optional categories: The Jane Grigson Award (in honor of a friend) and the Design Award, in which category award winners may become honorably double fisted with glee.

If you don’t win this time, just keep trying. I didn’t win last time, so it just means I have to get busy writing another book.

Oh dear. I’m beginning to be afraid to read the newspaper. Three deaths within a few days; Sheila Lukins, Cafe des Artistes and today, as reported in the New York Times, Sylvia Schur. Dead.

Relativity (1953) by M.C. Escher

I first met Sylvia in her gorgeous townhouse with the sun roof perched on the top floor. She was a major figure in the food world back then. Her business was thriving. There were many slim young women looking frantically busy and racing up and down stairs like an M.C. Escher drawing. Barbara Kafka was at that meeting and so were several others who became lifelong friends and acquaintances.

I was invited to the gathering on the strength of having written dozens and dozens of little single subject cookbooks. Several million of them were sold in so-called “gourmet” shops at the beginning of the right worshipful Julia Child era.

I learned the purpose of the meeting with Sylvia and Barbara and six other women was to create a new organization to be named Les Dames d’Escoffier. It was the brainchild of Carol Brock who was then food editor of The New York Daily News. The charter was to stipulate a membership limited to 100 carefully vetted women who earned their living as food or wine professionals.

Carol Brock was the first president of the group. Sylvia, the second. I was elected the third president.

Sara Moulton was then president of the Women’s Culinary Alliance, a vibrant gathering of young women. This organization had no limits on membership and no rules beyond getting together to expand their food knowledge.

I proposed to the Board of Directors of Les Dames that we merge the two groups. My idea had been we “old broads” could lend our mentoring acumen to the young folk. The suggestion received a unanimous and resounding NO vote.

I stayed with The Dames for a while, but ultimately decided to join the founding members of IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals). This organization started with a handful of cooking school teachers and grew to an association of nearly 4,000 mostly women from 39 countries. Its numbers have declined in the last couple of years but it remains a powerhouse of media-minded professionals.

Les Dames meantime maintained its original exclusivity and has also become an international organization.

Sylvia’s was a wise voice throughout the expansion of women’s roles in the food industry. I greatly admired her.” The only fault she had was always, always being late for absolutely everything: meetings, dinners, events of all kinds. I once waited for her for an hour and a half in a restaurant to which she had invited me for dinner. I left as she was arriving, breathlessly hurtling through the entrance. She seemed astonished that I was so p…d off.

We never arranged to have dinner together again though we stayed in touch for several years. Whenever the phone rang after 11:30 P.M., I always knew it was Sylvia calling about an urgent matter.

Looking back, it seems in character that she stayed on earth late enough to celebrate her 92nd birthday. She really was a grand old “dame.”

Julia Child

For several years I was the final speaker at all the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) conferences. My turn came at the end of the  long and excruciatingly-boring General Meeting lunch session. Customarily there were 1,200 or more (mostly women) in the audience. By the time I made my appearance many bottles of fine wine had been emphatically “tasted.” To state it plainly, more than a few were more than a little tipsy.

It was always anticipated that I would poke fun at all the big time food celebrities (except Julia) and tell funny little stories about the food in the news. One year the words hovering on every lip were Omega-3 fatty acids. Everyone was enchanted with this new discovery that promised life everlasting.

I began my talk by suggested that we would soon be embarking on the Great Cattle Reef Project. This was a scheme in which cows were to be taught how to swim underwater.  They would then produce gallons of Omega-3s that we were all crazy about and no milk that we didn’t want anymore…Laughter…

I described Martha (Stewart) as a cross between Ophelia and Leona Helmsley…Laughter…

Then I talked about world hunger…Silence…

Dejected, I crept from the stage.

Julia approached.

“Irena, dear that was the boringest speech I’ve ever heard,” she said.

She was right. It was.

Instead of giving ‘em the red meat they wanted, I had fed them gruel.

I mention this because watching the great movie, Julie and Julia, I remembered again so many wise things Julia said and did and why it was she who became a national folk hero.

The moral–I still sometimes forget–is to give people what they want. This means listening carefully to and speaking and writing and cooking for what others want. This may not always be precisely what we want.

Julia eventually knew what she wanted. She wanted to be loved. Money was never the motivating force.

By following what Joseph Campbell called her “bliss,” she was like Walter Cronkite. They both achieved the affection and admiration of the nation…and a lasting legacy that was based on honesty, diligent attention to detail and knowing when it is time to leave the stage.