At Home...Dad?

"When my mom was pregnant with me, with three crazy little boys in tow, my parents made a deal that Dad could go play handball after work every day if he'd take care of dinner when he got home...You see, Dad's usual hour of arrival home wasn't until seven thirty or eight, and that was on a good night." – Tieghan Gerard, from Half-Baked Harvest:Recipes from My Barn in the Mountains








Foiled Again

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Some of my favorite food blogs have many similarities to Gerard's wonderful set-up, as she describes how she initially self-volunteered into the role as a major contributor to nightly family cooking. Like she says, her dad had been designated cook, but the problem was he got home late and Tieghen not always so fondly remembers eating weeknight meals at 9:00! She finally had enough and decided to take the cooking reigns (or partial reigns, still helping dad), and it was then that her cooking passion and eventual career was launched. Let's face it, it really doesn't matter whether it was mom, dad, grandma, or some other caregiver who did the inspiring – the important part is trying to work out the family meal, even learning to cook on your own when necessary when young. As with many other things in our lives, we often end up doing things that we learned when we were kids. Gerard's cookbook is

really a beautiful homage to a place (Colorado high ground barn) and to a passion for cooking for others. She goes on in her introduction, "The number one reason I love cooking is the reactions I see on people's faces when they take that first bite of a delicious dish. My favorite thing ever is watching someone's eyes roll back and then open wide into an 'oh my gosh, this is heaven,' look."

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I take much inspiration from this book and the set-up that Tieghan talks about. As I look up at that tongue-in-cheek picture of that previous generation dad, tie and apron firmly in place, with two kids in the background bemoaning the fact that what comes from this cooking experiment might not be quite up to standards, I realize there is a lot of packed humor in this. That we still, no doubt, know many many men in families who claim that the kitchen, unlike, say, the grill outside, is not their first home, not their language. But in reality we can't help but wonder if there aren't a few more domestically astute men out there in the world today than once was? Certainly food and chef culture has sprung exponentially forward in the past 20 years – at the very least we certainly see an abundance of men in the kitchen through Netflix, Food Channel, Cooking Channel, etc. It might be downright fun to install in the new kitchen a few more spotlights on at home cooking men, just to see if things have become a little more comfortable.

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My blog idea is to try to enter into this mix, so to speak. I had been designated home cook for 20 years for a family of five, three daughters, now each on their own food journeys, and I can only hope with some similar passions as Tieghan has mentioned. As a writing instructor over the years, or working in small family business, I managed to get home well before that 7 or 8 time frame; in fact I had one of the greatest priveleges in the world – working mostly from home, I was able to flick through tons of cookbooks over the years, dog ear great magazine recipes (the Food Network Magazine section Weeknight Dinners is honestly stellar; Bon Appetit recipes always an adventure), plan a meal, head the store, see the girls of various buses, scoot them along on homework, and then dive into that night's entertainment, the meal. Although my audience has most definitely changed, and sometimes I cook only for one, depending, I look back at 20 years in the kitchen and can only hope that my own tongue-in-cheek vintage poster shows happier kids in the background, although wouldn't necessarily hold my breath.

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At Home...Dad? then is an adventure in cooking if nothing else. I have no quarrels whatsoever with talking about food as primarily a mode of nutritional transaction: get the best family food plan cookbook, get the plant-based menu, maybe follow a pescatarian diet, whatever it might be, I have tried it and you know what, the key is whether it is good, edible, and yes, nutritious food. But sometimes we also need to call something what it really is, even beyond the minerals. Cooking is downright fun. It is an edible art form. Some folks buy paints and start brushing across a blank canvas. Another starts with an open white laptop screen ready for writing. Another works wood. Let's not forget that cooking is absolutely an art, with many varying raw materials at your disposal, each with their own nuanced characteristics. Once the recipe has been started, and the internal timer has begun, there is that slight pressure that builds and you know that the dish just has to come out right. If it does, if it has, we will eventually receive the highest praise we need, what Tieghan calls that 'oh my gosh' moment. If a plate is empty by the end, the adventure has been worthwhile.