Pancakes from Dad

I spend a lot of time on the New York Times Cooking app.  I call it ‘recipe shopping’ and it’s one of my favorite ways to decompress after a long work day.  One thing I love the most about the app is that my dad loves browsing it too. Often, our ‘recipe shopping’ overlaps. I’ll shoot him a text about a mushroom stew recipe that seems up his alley- “have you made this yet?” or I’ll excitedly encourage him to make the new gnocchi dish because I made it last week and the sauce was so good. He’ll do the same to me- “when are you making this?” he’ll ask, accompanied with a link to a pasta recipe I’d recently surveyed as an option for dinner that weekend. We even have our favorite recipe developers, confidently following recipes from the likes of Ali Slagle and Melissa Clark because we have not yet been led wrong.

We do this with menus too.  We’ll text each other menus for new restaurants that we are excited to try, pointing out certain dishes and hypothetically planning how we would order and what we should split.  Since I was about 18 years old, it has been rare that my dad and I go to a restaurant without reading and rereading the menu beforehand. It was more practical when we lived together or when I was in school and had longer periods of time when I was home.  These days, it’s a lot of fantasizing about trips where we get to eat together and enjoy each other’s company for more than a short weekend.

I can draw a lot of lines directly from my dad to myself- we value laughter over almost everything, we have very childish senses of humor, we both have a knack for parallel parking (if I do say so myself), but most significantly, we love food and we love sharing it with people we love, especially each other. My dad has cooked a lot of beautiful food for me, my mom, and my brother.  He’s introduced me to countless ingredients, expanding my palate and opening my mind to flavors I continue to use regularly in my life today. He showed me at a young age that food grows from plants, like the ones he cared for in our garden, and that those plants are full of wonder.  He taught me that food is just as alive as we are.  

My dad is the kind of person to immediately drop whatever he is doing to help someone he cares about. Or someone he doesn’t even know very well.  He shows his love in acts of service to others.  I have been on the receiving end of this hundreds and hundreds of times.  Cooking food for someone else is such a common act of service, it often gets overlooked. While my brother and I were growing up, my dad would make intricately shaped and decorated pancakes every Sunday morning. They didn’t start out as such- this tradition began with round, fluffy pancakes from the Bisquick box when we were little.  I loved standing next to him as he diligently flipped each pancake.  He would use the spatula to pass me the tiny batter droplets that cooked more quickly; something about their small size appealed to me greatly.  But soon, he became creative with the cakes, using a spoon to guide the batter into different shapes.  Once finished cooking, he’d use food gel to decorate the pancake with a face, often using chocolate chips for eyes.  I loved when the chocolate chips got a little melty from contact with a warm pancake. Mickey Mouse made an appearance every now and then, I’m pretty sure Shrek did as well.  He never gave the same designs to me and my brother. He always took the care to give us our own personalized pancake character, making sure it was relevant to our lives at the time.  Maybe my brother was about to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween for the second year in a row- that Sunday, he’d get a Buzz pancake with a speech bubble written in food gel: “To infinity and beyond!”  Pancakes hold a place in my heart as one of the most perfect foods, and that is without a doubt because of my dad.

I think that the joy that my dad gets from food is one of the joys that I get out of food. In high school, when I first really got curious about cooking and baking, I’d ask to join him preparing meals. He’s a very patient teacher and I quickly became his eager sous.  I can fondly remember the countless times he’d run a spoonful of whatever was on the stove over to me (sometimes to a different room) to ask for a final stamp of approval before serving.  His enthusiasm for food, and sharing it, rubbed off on me and he’s the first person I will share any kind of food news with.  Our shared photos in our text messages look like a foodie’s Instagram feed- capturing meals we wish the other could have experienced, usually accompanied by rich descriptions of flavors or ingredients.

Many people, in classes, books, podcasts, television shows, and conversations, have shown me that food is about care and connection, but my dad was the first person to teach me this lesson.  I carry it with me in my professional and personal pursuits, and he’s always there with his steadfast support.  I’m so grateful for the curiosity and appreciation for food he inspires in me, and always look forward to our next meal together.

If we were together today, on his birthday, we would probably plan to go out to one of the restaurants on our shared never-ending list of spots we want to try. Or, alternatively, we’d be revisiting a favorite, getting the other pumped up about the chance to order that dish we liked so much the last time. But, alas, we are not together. He is in Virginia, and I am in New York. So instead, I’ll give him a call on FaceTime to say ‘Happy Birthday,’ and eagerly await the texts in the evening, delivering pictures of the dishes he had for dinner that he wants to share with me.