Today marks the 6 year anniversary of my first really post on this blog. I am reposting that post with some edits and additions because it gives good insight into why I love food and my family.
The original post was titled Growing up with Epicurean Parents
Only after years of being introduced to food and drink I can appreciate my parents love for eating. At age 11 when my mother really started using her Bon Appetit magazine it was a very different story.
The rule in our house was you had to try everything she cooked. If you didn’t like it fine but tasting it was a must. In her defense I now know I like broccoli, veal, spinach, lamb and so many other things. This got a little carried away though and after the 600th time of trying asparagus. A line had to be drawn and I finally didn’t have to try asparagus anymore, I was 18. It was a real right of passage.
My parents live in Indiana, so in 1985 my friends were eating fried chicken, steak, salad, spaghetti and other staples that require mayonnaise. We, however, were eating lamb, asparagus, and fancy sauces I still can’t pronounce. I was always very jealous of what my friends got to eat because it was such classic recognizable food and there wasn’t a discussion about it while they ate. Our house started getting fancier and fancier. During the beginning of this Bon Appetit experiment my father seemed to do mostly eating and didn’t concern himself with the kitchen. My mom didn’t work at the time so she did the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning. She always seemed to be coming up with something new to try and our spice cabinet grew unruly. I spent an entire afternoon alphabetizing her spices so she could make a grid for the back of the cabinet. The grid is still there though drastically out of date because they have even more spices now.
Eventually my mom went back to work and every once in a while my dad had to cook dinner. The early dinners that he cooked you always knew what you were getting. It was one of two menus. Ham steak, sweet potato, broccoli or you could have Ham steak, wild rice, broccoli. It became a running joke that the only thing he could cook indoors was ham steak. Outdoors the man has always the chef behind the charcoal grill, but that is another story. I don’t know if by making the joke we inadvertently threw down a gauntlet but he started cooking too. He quickly became the “meat guy” while she worked the side dishes.
Once they both got involved in the cooking recipes got even stranger. We were eating couscous before it was cool. They were drastically ahead of their time. While the east coast and west coast were discovering something and writing recipes in Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines my parent were scouring stores to try and find, what was at the time, obscure ingredients. We had family dinner together at least 5 nights a week. No outside interruptions were allowed this included the television and telephones. My dad didn’t answer the phone during dinner and to this day if you call during their meal they ask you to call back. So the four of us sat and ate together for at least a half hour. A good portion of this half hour was my brother and I wonder what we were eating and the other portion was my parents troubleshooting whatever it was they just cooked. When we got older my brother and I mocked them as the critiqued the food and wine. They used to soak the wine bottles in the sink so they could save labels and create a scrapbook so they would know what was good and why.
They seemed so odd in the Midwest in the late 80’s early 90’s. Then came the Food Network and now everyone is cooking. They are currently unstoppable. I have on many occasions recieved emails with pictures of dinners that they have made.
When this was originally posted my brother left the following comment to support my memories. This is what he had to say.
michael said…
When anne and i figured out that this was unique among our friends and thier families we began to protest, silent at first and then learning to pick our battles, and how to get away with not quite finishing, but still getting some dessert. When friends came over I would be a bit embarrassed when dinner came around, and the food had to be explained often with tutorials on how to properly manuver the food from the serving dishes to your plate and finally into your mouth. Frequently, friends would be convinced that they despised onions, or peppers, or some other culinary element, then much to their surprise it was to their liking.
To this day friends of mine note that my parents are the best cooks. They have singlehandedly opened minds to different foods and ways of eating. I guess it was easy to take this all for granted growing up, but now when I think about making dinner I don’t hesitate to use my intuition or go out on a limb.
