Two Dishes
What my father taught me about food, without ever meaning to, and the bookend to the story
Some of my earliest memories involve my dad over the stove. This is actually kind of funny since my mom did all of the cooking for the family. But one or two nights a week she worked evenings in a laboratory.
That meant my dad was in charge. Of the three of us kids, of dinner, of bedtime.
He made exactly two things. We had them, on repeat, every week.
My mom was an early gourmet, and like all contrarian kids, this made us crave TV dinners. She wouldn’t suffer them.
In time, I’ve realized my dad’s two things were our version of TV dinners. They were simple, quick, and we got to eat them in front of the TV. Another thing my mom wouldn’t suffer.
What were the two things?
Fried egg sandwiches. These began with a warmed pan, some swirled butter, a couple of eggs, hastily scrambled with a fork. Some salt and pepper. Sometimes a sprinkle of cheese. Added to two slices of toast, sometimes a bit burned, sometimes not. He’d layer the egg between the bread, flatten it with a spatula and cut it in half. Voila.
Bacon Peanut Butter Toast. Two slices of whatever bread we had on hand, a coating of peanut butter, and a strip of bacon, cut in half. Put under the broiler and watched. Sometimes carefully, sometimes not. The result? A molten, slightly greasy, salty, completely delicious dinner.
Even back then I wondered if these were his version of a TV dinner. If he craved this simplicity. Either way, we three kids and my dad nearly always ate these feasts in front of the TV, watching the same progression of shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and the FBI Files.
We were in heaven.
***
Years later, long after I'd stopped needing him to make me dinner, I asked him what he’d like for Father’s Day.
He paused, for just a moment, and then said, “I’d love a Berry Pie.”
So I riffed on a Blueberry Pie recipe I had, making it a triple berry pie and presented it to him on Father’s Day. With a fork.
He wasn’t eating much at this point. He had Parkinson’s. And he was failing. But he ate two slices of my Berry Pie. Before dinner.
That was it. That was the whole reaction. No big speech, no “this means so much to me.”
Just two pieces before dinner.
***
For years I thought of that pie as something separate from him. My thing, for him. A gift in a different language. One he didn’t speak but seemed to understand anyway, the way you can love a song in a language you don’t know.
I don’t think that anymore.
***
Here’s what I think now: my father’s two dishes and my pie were from the same book. Just different lengths.
His version was short: two dishes, repeated for years. Never expanded, never explained.
He didn’t pass down a recipe. He didn’t pass down a skill, not really. I can’t trace a single thing I know how to do in the kitchen back to him. What he passed down was smaller and stranger than that. He passed down the idea that food could be a way of saying something you didn’t have other words for. He just never went very far with it. Two dishes was as far as he needed to go.
***
I still think about my father at the stove sometimes. The egg, the bacon, the same two things, over and over. I used to think that’s all he knew how to make.
Now I see it and think: that’s all he needed. He found the story and repeated it over and over, in the words he had available.
Until his final Father’s Day, I made him the Berry Pie. Those were my words. No others were needed.
We were bookends.
If you’d like my recipe for Triple Berry Pie, you can find it here.