A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

Most of my early food memories are associated with my dad. When I was growing up, he used to play basketball on Sundays, but on the weeks that he didn’t play, he and I would get up early – while everyone else slept in, and have breakfast together. We would sit on the porch the weather was nice, but most times at our dining room table. We used to have these mugs (which my mom has since given away), I would stir in my dad’s coffeemate into his coffee and he would butter his bagel – butter on top, never inside. I took the comics, he took the rest of the paper. We would sit and enjoy the quiet Sunday morning together.

My dad isn’t what you would call a healthy eater, but if you see him you’d never know, he probably only has about 5% body fat. When I was a kid, he would sit in the kitchen before bed, have a tall glass of milk and a sleeve of oreo cookies. While he doesn’t do that anymore, our family doctor still has to remind him every year that brownies are not a major food group. Even though he has been known to finish off a bag of burgers from Burger King, he works out like crazy – I wish I inherited his love for working out, because I certainly inherited the bad eating habits. My dad used to run at night when he came home from work. Sometimes I used to ride my bike alongside…and every time, he would have to help push me and my pink banana seat bike up our hill because I could never make it. I used to play soccer as a kid, but quickly realized that I was only in it for the oranges at halftime.

As I grew up, going to the market on Sundays was our thing. We would hop into his green Volkswagon Cabriolet and drive to Sudbury Farms. We would stop at the deli counter to get cold cuts for the week and the bakery for a fresh loaf of bread. The bread never made it home though, I would rip out the insides and eat it on the way home.

My dad used to work at night, so my mom would usually make us Kraft mac and cheese, take us out for pizza and if we were lucky, McDonalds. So on the weekends, my dad cooked. Some of his specialties include: homemade pasta, ricotta gnocchi, and enchiladas. You can see how I started my love of carbohydrates.

My grandmother, his mother, was a baker. Every year at Thanksgiving we would make an apple pie together using her recipe. Since then, I have tweaked the recipe (there was never enough crust) and we now have apple pie bake-offs at the holiday time. Of course I think mine are always better (read: extra crust – it’s the best part, and apples that are cut into small pieces) but he insists his are classic (read: thin crust with holes because there wasn’t enough to stretch over the top and huge slices of apples). Since it’s father’s day I guess we can call it a draw…be we all know which pie reigns supreme.

Happy Father’s Day dad – and just for today, you can consider brownies a major food group! xoxo