While I knew I was going to be inducted into the Who’s Who of American Food and Beverage, I didn’t know how excited I would be when Wolfgang Puck slipped the medal over my head or how wonderful it would be to share the stage with the other new inductees, all-American celebrity chef Bobby Flay, Spanish chef Jose Andres, Jim Clendenen, owner and winemaker of Au Bon Climat, and Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and one of my heroes (sadly, he wasn’t there).
Then there was the looooong wait for the cookbook part of the program to begin. Fortunately, when it did, the Baking and Dessert category came up early. Even though I was convinced I wasn’t going to win, hearing the names of the three baking books that had been nominated – Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters, King Arthur Whole Grain Baking and mine – didn’t stop my heart from going flip-flop. And when Baking was declared the winner, everything went flip-flop in triple time and my knees went jellyish too.
It was incredibly exciting and so wonderful to be able to share the moment with my little family – both Michael, my husband, and Joshua, The Kid, were there – my fabulous editor at Houghton-Mifflin, Rux Martin, and my friends in the food community.
This book has brought so many new people into my life – including my new friends in the blogosphere – that last night, as the lights dimmed in Avery Fisher Hall and the awards ceremony was about to begin, I truly felt that whatever happened in the following few hours wasn’t so important: the book and I were already winners.
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