Cooking Shows With Dad

It was the 1980s. Two of my favorite toys were my Barbie dream kitchen and my Combo Kitchen set, complete with all the various plastic food hand-me-downs leftover from the older kids’ toy sets. Mom was so committed, she gave up an entire kitchen cupboard (now the cereal cupboard, also formerly known as Margy’s “secret place” circa early 1970s.) I was also allowed a small portion of dried beans and rice to play with, and was allowed to chop up someone’s fake pearl necklaces that I fancied looked like giant tapioca balls.

I remember watching cooking shows with Dad on weekends. I also remember lots of James Bond and detective tv shows like Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. But I digress. Back in the day before Food Network, one of the only places I remember seeing chefs in action was on PBS. I’m sure Dad tried a bunch of their recipes and learned countless techniques, but I remember a few specifics.

First there was the cutting of grapefruit, where you slice away the peeling and cut the fruit from the membrane, working your way around it.

Then there was Sauce Potat’. I think that one came from Justin Wilson’s “Louisiana Cookin'." Ooooo, I guarantee! I can’t seem to find the recipe online, but it’s basically bacon and sliced potatoes fried with onion and parsley. I think. I was young. It was delicious and we had it for supper all the time.

The second recipe was the infamous Apple Pan Dowdy that we made together. Once.

Dad retired when I was in 4^th grade. After years of meals on the road in rural Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington, he must have gained some weight. After retirement he dieted with scientific precision and unequaled fervor. There were spreadsheets that auto-calculated nutritional information and portion size. I don’t remember seeing a kitchen scale, but he probably had some gadget in his IBM toolbox that did the same job, while measuring current and predicting lottery numbers. In those days he took over some of the cooking from Mom (and all of the dirty dishes; he wanted her to have some illusion of “retirement” too). He was naturally lean, and he didn’t have much weight to lose, so the diet quickly served its purpose and he could get on with his life. But the cooking stuck.

I must have shown an interest in Apple Pan Dowdy because I clearly remember the enthusiastic mission that the two of us undertook. There was some specialty cookware we needed in order to try out the recipes: ramekins. Finding these became our goal.

Ramekins can now be purchased in all sizes and colors at supermarkets, drug stores, and (probably) convenience stores. But this was pre-Rachel Ray. This was small town Idaho. There were no mini-souffles. There was no….what else do you need ramekins for?….crème brulee! No. There was none of this. After an arduous search at The Bon, JC Penney’s, Sears, and whatever the heck that weird store in Lewiston was, we found some ramekin-shaped oven-safe soup mugs at Ernst Hardware.

We tried Apple Pan Dowdy.

I no longer have the recipe because it was horrible. Basically, you butter and sugar white bread and make a sort of a mini-pie in the ramekins, filled with molasses and chopped apples and stuff. I was a child. It was disgusting. Why would we make that? Why? Why when Mom’s apple pie was perfect, would we bother to make that disgusting bitter and sulfurry flavored crap?

At any rate, I now use the very same soup mug “ramekins” for hot artichoke cheese dip, and Dad and I continued to share a love of cooking for the rest of our lives. Even now after a particularly delicious meal, I think to myself, “I gotta email Dad about this!” I’m pretty sure he’s God’s VP of IT, so maybe I should try sending all my anecdotes to dad@heaven.org. Hmmm. Food for thought.