Sunday, December 17, 2023

My Father's cooking

 My father didn't cook a lot, but when he did, it was memorable.

I had a note recently from someone who still remembers his potato salad as being the best she's ever eaten.  That's one thing I miss about him -- his potato salad.  I was always his "taster," and let him know if he had enough salt in it.  He said his secret was slicing the cooked potatoes very thin.  He also added lots of onion (which is why I never try to make it, since Walt won't eat onion and it's not the same without onion), sweet pickles, boiled eggs, Best Food mayonnaise and parsley.  I think that's all.  But his potato salad was one of my favoritest things and I haven't found any potato salad that comes close.

But he made other things too.  And he usually made them once to see how they would turn out and then didn't make them again.  He loved Italian food and his calzone (like an Italian meat pie) was, like his potato salad, the most delicious I've ever eaten and I have not had another that matches it.

I still remember having some home made egg nog that he did one New Year's Eve.  He gave me some before he put the liquor in it.  I swear it was whipping cream with flavoring.  Again, I've never had another  that I liked as much as that one.

My father was for the richest, most buttery, most creamy of anything.  We would do taste tastes with him.  He'd go out into the back porch, which had a window, and he'd open the window.  Karen and I would give him tastes of two kinds of the same things and he would choose which he liked best.  It was always the richest.

Then one day he decided to make peanut butter cookies while my mother, sister, and I were out somewhere.  When we came home, he was laughing.  He showed us his "peanut butter cookies."  I don't know what he mixed, but the bowl was the consistency of pancake batter.  Obviously they never got cooked, but we teased him about his peanut butter cookies the rest of his life.

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