Word on the street in the cooking competition community was that the recipe category, her category this time, was the hardest.
She’d learned this from her network of food competition friends. Along with finding a purpose in these food competitions, she’d also found a community.
Just like any community, there was gossip, jealousy, and backbiting. Because there was also money at stake, the competition could be cutthroat.
Hope had learned this was no one’s hobby, this was serious business.
But here was also comradery, bonding, and mutual respect.
In the end, she just wanted to make a good showing in the competition. She wanted to do better than her dessert disaster. That was her mark of success. Just get better. Learn.
And then the unthinkable happened.
Marcia H. Venerable, home cook and proprietor of Venerable Catering, won the recipe competition. Her zucchini won!
She’d exceeded her goal. Instead of flaming out, she’d actually leave Vegas with the Best Recipe title and eight thousand dollars!
And that win meant she wasn’t done, she was still in it, she’d compete for the biggest food prize you could win.
Marcia Hope Venerable from Covington, Kentucky, was going to go head-to-head in the finals with all the category winners. This was more than she’d ever dreamed. It was almost too much to think about winning The World’s Best Dish Title. One hundred thousand dollars prize money? That was more money than she could imagine. That kind of money would be beyond paying bills. It could be life-changing.
Life-changing.
No, best not to think about winning the whole thing. She wasn’t going to win the whole thing.
But, if she was there, she’d give it her best. She’d already exceeded her goal when she’d packed her knives to come to Las Vegas, why not go for it all?
Her early failures at cooking competitions had taught her a lot. She had gained valuable experience. It was one thing to cook well, another thing to create your own recipes, and a completely different level of pressure doing that with an audience, under a time crunch, in the middle of the circus that was Las Vegas.
The rules of the competition allowed each competitor to have an assistant or two if they needed it. But Hope didn’t have that luxury. She could barely afford her own ticket here, much less fund travel for anyone else. So, while most of the competitors had a sous chef, and it would be nice, Hope was going it alone.
She’d already beat out dozens of competitors from all over the country who’d qualified at a local event like she had. She’d already proven herself in her division. But still, maybe she could win it all!
She dared to dream, but only for a moment. The dream couldn’t happen if she lost focus on reality. The reality was that she needed to give her best energy to this dish if she stood a chance. She needed to keep a cool head if she didn’t want to flame out and embarrass herself in front of culinary luminaries.
She believed in creating food with a good heart and sweet intentions. She had cooked in a sour mood before, and it always led to failure. Hope believed that a good heart led to good food, she believed it to her core.
No matter how often Archie laughed at that and told her it was ridiculous, she cooked with joy.
She called it her Happy Kitchen philosophy.
“The greatest chefs in the world swear and smoke and think they’re better than everyone else. Your happy kitchen idea is juvenile, so you’ll never get anywhere,” Archie said. And then, of course, he ate the entire meatloaf she’d made for him.
Hope had to push away the doubters and her own insecurities.
She’d made it this far. She was one of a handful of competitors vying for The World’s Best Dishes Food Competition prize money and bragging rights.
On the day of the finals, she approached the competition with peace, gratitude, and joy to be at this place in her life.
A giant swath of space on Fremont Street was cordoned off. Competitors cooking stations were side by side, three rows deep. Spectators could file by and watch the competitors do their thing. A lot of the competitors had their own personal cheering section.
Of course, Archie wasn’t there, neither were her daughters. Julia had her job in New York, and Sara, well, who knew what was up with her?
She decided that was okay, she didn’t have to worry about anything but the competition. All the better for her to focus.
And no matter what, Hope was going to enjoy how far she’d come in her food journey.
ChapterTwo
