Between my mom and my dad, hands down, my mom is the cook. My mom managed to break outside her ethnic Lithuanian, peasant-food background and, in her adult life overseeing our household, make recipes that came from her friends or were clipped out of the Chicago Tribune: Indian shish-kabobs, linguine with clam sauce, chop suey. Such dishes, while mundane in today’s international food culture, truly pushed the boundaries in our world. When my mom dies, people will talk about her food.
I’m a good middle-of-the-week cook: I can walk into a grocery store after work not having had time to think about dinner let alone research a recipe, look at a piece of meat or catch the glimpse of a vegetable, scan my memory for tastes that come to mind, and end up throwing together something that ends up tasty and “actually pretty good” (as my husband says).
I’ve always credited this ability to my mom, who I watched add in an extra dash of this or that and make recipes just right. I spent hours watching her cook as I grew up. But it’s been a year since my dad died, and in hindsight, I’ve realized I actually owe my food spontaneity to him.
For his one-year anniversary this Christmas Eve, I planned to memorialize him by visiting the lakefront of Lake Michigan where he spent so much time painting, swimming, shooting his bow and arrow, or barbecuing for us on a holiday weekend. But when I woke up that morning, I realized what I needed to do was make pancakes.
He'd make pancakes Sunday mornings for me and him – his one meal a week he was responsible for, you could argue -- and when I became high school age and started sleeping in way past pancake hour, he'd always leave one or two in the pan for me to find later, a trend that would continue even when I was home from college during breaks. His pancakes were always really flat, which drove my mom nuts – “He over-beats the batter! You don’t do that!” -- but I never complained. He used to balk at my using Aunt Jemimah syrup instead of real maple syrup from some farm in Michigan, but this morning he'd have been proud, because I've since made the switch and thankfully reached for the “good” stuff.
This gesture of making pancakes surprised me; I have not associated my dad with food in that way, despite the fact I knew he could be self-sufficient if called upon and enjoyed a good meal. He was old school foodie, a true meat-n-potatoes, dinner-on-the-table-when-he-comes-home kinda guy. As I remember him, however, I realize how connected he was to food, maybe even moreso than my mom.
When people recall my dad, they think of a reserved man, an artist who was a free spirit and loved the outdoors. One strong memory takes me back to when I was young – maybe 6 or 7 or – and we’d go smelt fishing along the shore of downtown Chicago. And what did we do with the smelt? We’d bring them home and fry them up. Well, my dad would, and I’d watch. He’d coat their thin, silver bodies in flour, dip them in egg, and sprinkle them with salt and pepper before throwing them in sizzling butter. Sometimes, if we were really tired when we got back – you go smelt fishing at night – my mom would do it, but I could tell they shared the same simple recipe.
My dad didn’t just take me smelt fishing, we fished and brought home blue gills and such for dinner, which he’d clean and get ready for my mom to prepare. Today, if I go on vacation and catch a fish that a resort cooks up for us, I consider it quaint and holistic. Turns out my dad had been serving up the real experience the whole time.
But back to my ability to throw things together. What I remember about my dad is that his recipes were as straightforward and simple as you can get; you could argue they weren’t truly recipes at all. He literally threw things together, and while basic, they hit the spot – no measuring needed. While I certainly am influenced by my mom’s ability to explore different foods, what I’ve become most proud of is my blank canvas dinners. Food is a major part of my life, my creativity, my recreation. A huge reason why is not just because I enjoy it, but because I have the ability to make it work for me and to be exciting, whether I’m throwing together something on a whim after work or researching reservations to secure for a vacation my husband and I have planned moths out.
“This has nice flavors,” my dad would say if he liked something. He didn’t have the vocabulary necessarily, but he could pick up on elements of a wine or dish, and when he was at the stove, improvise along the way.
Not bad qualities to inherit, I’ll say. Here’s to you, dad.
Belfast by Orbital
7 years ago
