Give Thanks for Good Eating
A decade ago, my parents collected their recipes into a book and gave it to their children and close friends. An unmarried journalist, I travel often and had few occasions to crack it open until my brother asked me to feed a big gang the night before his late September wedding.
I stumbled upon a treasure trove. Each entry comes with a note, a nugget of insider info or advice, most written by my dad. Somehow I’d never noticed them — or perhaps the passage of time, and my father, has endowed them with Proustian force.
Dad died two years ago this week; we held his funeral the day after Thanksgiving. He was a powerful patriarch who could freeze his sons in fear from several rooms away: “DaaaVIIID!”
Yet he was gentle, kind, and full of joy: the kitchen was a democracy, not a dictatorship. “Not Dad’s favorite but he’s out-voted by many,” explains Chicken Broccoli.
My mother and father met in 1962, at a luau on a Chicago beach. In the blink of an eye they had 8 children: 10 years separate the oldest and youngest. They grew up during the Depression and WWII. Maybe they grasped early on that the surest route to a strong family would be to eat together and eat well. Or maybe they just loved good food.
Mom woke early to make breakfast for 8 kids everyday and dispatch us to school with sandwiches. She spent an hour prepping dinner before Dad returned from work to don an apron. The 60s slipped into the 70s and 80s, yet somehow the rebellion and free love, greed and the supposed breakdown of the American family seemed to end at our kitchen table.
It fit all 10 of us, and as long as Dad wasn’t traveling for business, we were all seated for dinner by six o’clock sharp. We learned to eat fast or lose out. We hardly realized everything was delicious — we knew nothing else.
But we could see it in the faces of friends who stayed for dinner. When Mom’s cookies disappeared at school events. When, after “doctoring” his sauce for ages, Dad opened a chain of thin-crust pizza shops (Towne Pizza slogan: “The delicacy of an appetizer; the character of a meal”).
What began over grilled pork and pineapple kebabs on the shores of Lake Michigan blossomed into a movable feast — all laid out in the family recipe book. Dad’s Czech and Mom’s German, but their recipes cover the gamut.
Most of the notes are bits of family lore. “Probably Mom’s favorite! Don’t make it for Laurie,” warns Mom’s Black Bean Soup. Dad’s Marinara Sauce remarks: “Dalyan’s record is six bowls.”
Dad’s Steak Diane strangely suggests Busha Browne’s Planters, a Jamaican sauce, as an alternative. “The story behind Busha’s sauce is that we found it at Whole Foods in New York when Pete, Dave, Jon & I went shopping for the dinner for 20 for Mom’s 70th Birthday. Picture each of us running a shopping cart yelling suggestions to each other across the store on a busy Saturday morning.”
Most offer a glimpse into the mind of the head chef. Dad would often fall in love with a dish in some far off tavern, then endeavor to recreate it. He would mostly fail. But success was hardly the point. “Another of Dad’s excuses for using lots of basil,” says Pasta Fagioli. “Best one he ever tasted — and never matched — was in a little greasy spoon near Morristown, New Jersey.”
My father aimed for greatness. But that objective was secondary — a chef, he thought, must enjoy himself, and often wing it. “The measurements are not exact, as I have never had a written recipe,” Dad’s Meat Sauce explains. “This sauce is my best idea for having a free spirit in cooking. You’ve got to feel the role of each spice and add accordingly. A cocktail or two helps.”
He could be a bit of a showman. “Dramatically drizzle with one half-teaspoon sesame oil,” advises Mongolian Beef, “toss & serve hot & take a bow.” (There are very few bolded and underlined words in the book: the bow, it seems, is crucial.)
More than anything, the book is an ode to a fruitful 50-year partnership; my parents’ abiding love is the note sustained throughout. We see how their division of labor boosts production and spreads culinary joy. “Easy to do after much prep work by Mom,” says Dad’s Lo Mein. “Mom and Dad served this to 20 business-people friends in Denton, Texas, with great success.”
How they embrace new ideas. Mom’s Vinaigrette advises: “This recipe has been changed a few times — use your imagination.” And create new dishes — together, or for one another. “Mom and Dad invented this one,” says Lemony Garlic Lamb Stew. “Mom invented after Dad described a business lunch he had in Paris,” explains Tenderloin Port Wine Sauce. “Now a family standard.”
Their children have taken up the torch. Our gatherings today are prefaced with weeks-long email chains about the meal plan — who’s cooking what on which day and why. And who wants to cook something better.
But it’s hard to miss the void at the center of it all. Lately even more so. Buoyed by travel and a sea of grandchildren, our mother held her grief at bay for a while. Then last month she woke one morning and wondered what the hell she was doing here, still alive, without her husband of 50-plus years.
Now her 12th grandchild is on the way. Maybe that birth will cheer her. What’s certain is the indoctrination of our newest member will begin soon. We might start with this: whenever a dish struck Dad as particularly fine, he would grin and, licking his fingers, declare, “That’s good eating.”
I can’t think of any greater achievement for a family. Good eating this holiday, to you and yours.
