CHAPTER 6
HEROIC FOOD PREPARATION

    Good news! You are probably eligible for the Award for Valor in Food Heroics for Culinary Labors Above and Beyond the Call of Duty and/or its junior counterpart.

    And, no, these awards are not ripoffs, as they are awarded to you, at no charge whatever, by yourself. After all, only you know the trouble you've seen. But, while the awards are given on the honor system, care must be taken not to debase them, not to take them too lightly. They represent the sufferings of millions, including, most likely, yourself, and they should be treated with respect.

    To take an example from this book, peeling 24 thin commercial asparagus stems is probably deserving of a Junior Award for Valor in Food Heroics. It's something you don't have to do but are doing anyway to enhance the happiness of others. Or you hope it will enhance the happiness of others. But, while peeling asparagus stems will win you a junior award, it may or may not bring you the senior award. The senior award requires that you not only perform culinary labors above and beyond the call of duty, but that you suffer a LACK OF APPRECIATION for those labors.

    Let us say your insalata di finocchi e cetrioli, followed by tonnrella alla paesana and ending with a triumphant gelato di fragole, are such culinary masterpieces that cheering dinner guests carry you around your dining room on their shoulders. Do you really need an award for your sufferings? Of course not. Even your feet, which were hurting pretty bad, will recover after a couple of turns around the room on someone else's shoulders.

    I can be happy for you, but I cannot offer you a senior award though you may well be eligible for the junior version.

Let us give an example of a good, solid Junior Award for Valor in Food Heroics that gets kicked up higher:
    You have spent several hours preparing galettes au fromage (French cheese pastries) for a party. Now, you could have bought crackers and cheese or bought some icky looking dip from the supermarket cold case. But you are determined to give your guests the best, and you have spent much effort on those galettes au fromage. Which kicks the project into the Junior Award for Valor category. Unless, of course, you have made so many fancy dishes of this nature that you breeze right through the recipe. In which case and particularly if you complete all your Christmas preparations by December 1 of each year and tell everyone that you have you might consider moving a long ways away, which will give your friends a much-needed break.

    But let us say that you achieve those galettes au fromage with considerable effort and some difficulty, thereby earning your Junior Award for Valor. And you place a platter of hot, fragrant, puffed galettes on the living room coffee table, and the guests say, "OOOH. Those look delicious! What are they?" And, while you are in the kitchen laboring over the next batch, your dog approaches the coffee table and, as the guests watch with gleeful chuckles, eats several galettes and licks the others. Afterwards, even though you produce batch after batch of galettes entirely free of dog saliva even on a different platter, for pete's sake no one wants to eat them. You have, of course, just been kicked up to a solid senior Award for Valor in Food Heroics. You have suffered, you have been unappreciated, and you have earned your award.

    There are, of course, levels of food trouble far beyond dog drool. Situations which earn the Award for Valor in Food Heroics cum Laude. Which award cum laude I have earned more than once, and you may have earned it too. The Award for Valor in Food Heroics cum Laude requires not merely trouble but outright disaster. And not only embarrassment but humiliation.

    And, if you question wherein lies the heroic valor, are you sure you've lived through such an experience?

    I should give examples from my own life, but I'm not yet up to describing the cum laude ones. I'll share with you now and then from my portfolio of awards, including embarrassing circumstances for which I have earned the senior Award for Valor. But I'll have to hold back on the cum laude experiences until I am psychologically stronger.

    And how about you? Have you had food experiences that were so awful they were funny? Or not funny but horrible in a fascinating way? Are you willing to share them? I am not suggesting that you do permanent damage to your psyche by sharing anything cum laude in humiliation. Just a solid disaster or two, and only if you feel up to it. And of course you don't have to sign your name; a pseudonym will do.

    My website, foodandfiction.com, has a Food Heroics section where you can learn of the sufferings of others, which might make you feel better about some things that have happened to you. And you can, in turn, relate things that have happened to you that might make someone else feel better. A mutual disaster society, in short.

    We should of course have a tangible reward for our hard work and heroic sacrifice. Money would be nice, though even a lot of money might not compensate us for our Awards for Valor in Food Heroics cum Laude. I have thought of approaching, say, the Ford Foundation, with a suggestion that they fund these awards on a trial basis. I seem to recall that the Ford Foundation is strong on funding things on a trial basis. And, when the trial period is over, they throw the baby, diaperless, back on local laps. Since we are dealing with trials here, a foundation sponsored trial period would seem at first to be appropriate. But unfortunately only at first. My grasp on reality, though weak at times, has nevertheless been strong enough to keep me from trying for a foundation grant, Ford or otherwise.

    Instead I hope to offer on my website an actual printed Certificate for Valor in Food Heroics for Culinary Labors Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, suitable for framing, which is the very least we all have coming.

    But I'm not offering it yet.

    Because, my computer skills being fairly basic, I have no idea how to go about this project. I am sure that hundreds of thousands of people know how to whip up on their computers beautiful, official, and elegant Certificates for Valor in Food Heroics for Culinary Labors Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, complete with the name of the person who has earned it. They may even know where to get the lovely gold seals that add so much to the general effect. I believe that someday one of these people will come into my own life, and I will be able to offer these certificates, modestly priced and suitable for framing, on my website, foodandfiction.com.

    In the meantime, I suggest that, if you have earned a certificate and your computer skills are up to it, you should create the actual, physical certificate yourself, making it as it should be extremely beautiful and official and putting it into a frame similar to those one sees in doctors' and lawyers' offices.

    A couple of official certificates hanging in your kitchen should make people pause before they criticize the food.