My Favorite Recipe

copyright 1997, Stephen A. Davis

She, my Mommy, got many magazines. Among others she got: Matron Today, Whole Sewing, American Gratitude Weekly, and Condensed Vignettes. But she also got a lot of cooking magazines, and, one day, sitting on the porch one twilight, with barely enough purple light to read by, I was browsing through these magazines randomly, with little interest but with warm contentment, just knowing they came from other places to my Mommy for her enjoyment and matronly gratification.

And I saw there was a recipe contest.

Send in your favorite recipe, it said, and, if we like it, it'll become an offering in the Cooking World (that was the name of the magazine I was browsing through) Recipe of the Month Club. And YOU, it said, in big letters can get royalties. Well, I didn't know what royalties was, but they sounded good to me and I made up a recipe and sent it in and the rest is history.

I got over nine million dollars within the next eighteen months and they said it was the recipe of the decade and also the recipe of the century and everybody in the whole world, I guess, ate it and loved it, and I got my picture on the cover of about sixty big magazines. Maybe you remember?.

I pretty much remember the recipe.

The recipe I sent in was for "Broiled Killian Strips with Olives Patricianne and Jelly." Here it is:

• Dice several large tomatoes into a McMurtry bowl.
  
  
• Sift in 1/3 peck powdered anchovies.
  
  
• Drench in high lipid jellies. (Use an assortment to your taste. I prefer Casaba and Cantaloupe rind jelly.)
  
  
• Stir, blend lightly, then heat in a microwave oven for for about twenty seconds.
  
  
• Thinly slice your killian into about twelve 8" strips. strips (If you prefer, veal or smoked turkey may be substituted).
  
  
• Embed the strips into the sauce in the McMurtry bowl.
  
  
• Broil until strips just begin to crinkle. (Be sure that the adjustable ventral slots on the bottom of the McMurtry bowl are slightly ajar, otherwise, crisping will not occur.)
  
  
• While the killian strips are broiling (generally, about 8 1/2 minutes) you can prepare the olives patricianne.
  
  
• Start with two or three cans of petite, pitted ripe olives. (I prefer the Moroccan Miniatures.)
  
  
• Blend a bundle of fresh Belgrade asparagus to total liquidity.
  
  
• Pour over the olives and add two tablespoons of baking soda. Stir gently. This is the olives patricianne
  
  
• When the killian strips are done, remove the McMurtry bowl from the broiler, close the ventral slots, and immediately (this is important) pour the olives patricianne on top but DO NOT MIX IN!
  
  
• Serve with sherbet on the side. Serves six.
  
  

Everybody took off like crazy on the recipe and I made nine million dollars without having to do anything (except send in the recipe) and not only from the recipe itself, either. Like I got paid a lot to go talk about it (the recipe) on TV and to nice ladies and such.

The recipe got reviewed and praised all over the place. Not only in Cooking World, but in the Wall Street Journal and Popular Mechanics, too, and others.

And the New York Times ran a big article on how to find the best killian, and its history and why it's such a delicacy.

And International Health Annual featured a whole bunch of articles on high lipid jellies and why that was so good for you and they even had a big scientific symposium on that for three days on a ship at sea. (It had to be at sea so as to avoid legal copyright exposures so I'm told.)

Oh, I got a lot of money in royalties from the recipe, from anytime anybody published it, or used it in a restaurant, or fed it to the poor, I would get paid in checks, which got all aglommerated (or whatever the word is) and sent to me in the mail every month.

That's how I learned what royalties is.

Then I started getting other royalties, too, from all the people using my ideas in my recipe, like, from International Health Annual and the New York Times and even (a big, big check) from a fellow named H. Henderson Henderbolt who held the USA exclusive marketing rights on McMurtry bowls, which, by then, were selling out at your local hardware stores everywhere!

So, given all this, you can see why this is my favorite recipe!

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