Readings

Sunday, I hosted an Easter gathering with about a dozen
members of my extended family. It was a lot of work, and I’m too tired to write
the post I was thinking about—the one about the chilled pea soup with tarragon
that opened the meal—so that will have to wait until later in the week. Don’t
worry, I’ll get to it, and you’ll be glad I did. The soup is a cool and creamy
taste of spring. It’s a pea soup for folks who don’t like pea soups.

Organizing a meal for a dozen people is a bit like starting
a small company, putting on a minor musical, and invading a tiny republic—all at
the same time. It costs money, there’s always a bit of drama, someone will get
wounded, but hopefully no one dies. In this case, the meal (which was this
olive-stuffed lamb) was a joint effort, with my friend Zoe bringing the dessert
(a luscious scented apple cobbler that perfumed the house as we ate), and Santa
Maria prepping many of the vegetables.

One of them was asparagus. We had other things to do during
the day, including attending a church service, so Santa Maria got it ready in
the morning.  She came up with neat
way to keep the vegetable from wilting during the day. She snapped off their
stems and stuck them like daffodils in baking dish full of water. I just loved
the way they looked, and I snapped a photo of them in the middle of cooking the
meal.

Her system worked like a charm, and when the time for
cooking them rolled around, they were ready to go. Pulling off a dinner party
of this size without losing your mind takes a lot of planning. And improvising.
Santa Maria pulled of both at the same time with the asparagus. At some point,
I’ll write about how to best plan for a dinner party, but now. I’m too tired.
There’s no amount of planning that can reduce the amount of work, short of
planning to go to someone else’s house.

But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to gather my
family together in my house for a few hours, and contemplate the arrival of
spring. My siblings and their spouses represent most of the major religious
traditions of the Western World, including agnosticism, and because I knew we
would be such a diverse group, and because I wanted to find some meaning in the
day, I asked everyone to bring a quote about rebirth and renewal to share at
the table.

At the end of the meal, I put the kids and nephews on a
Wallace & Gromit video, and we started to read and recite our quotes. One
person quoted from Robin Williams, another from George Lucas. A brother-in-law
read from Shakespeare, and Santa Maria read from Thomas Mann. My sister recited
an E.E. Cummings poem, and I decided to call our gathering an easter meal with
a small “e.”

I’ve seen all kinds of definitions of what it means to be a
man, from being tough (Robert Mitchum) to being sensitive (Check out this Nick
Lowe video ) to being a canine.

Now, for the benefit of anyone who might be wondering
(women, young men, small terriers) I’ll tell you the number one thing about what it means
to be a man. And it’s only because my biology prevents me from being thrown out
of the fraternity that I can reveal the following:

We haven’t a clue about what it means to be one. There, I
said it. It’s true. Trust me. We don’t ask for directions because we don't get lost.
We never know we’re lost. So we don’t ask directions. If anyone you know denies
this truth, consider them lost.

A lot of writers, musicians, artists, and adolescents have
wrestled with this question over the years, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (“Confessions”)
to Michel de Montaigne (he retired at
38!) to Philip Roth (my favorite: “My  Life
as a Man”) and L. Rust Hills (check out “How to Do Things Right: The
Revelations of a Fussy Man”) and we can now add to that distinguished list the
new magazine Kindling Quarterly.

More properly, Kindling Quarterly examines what it means to
be a dad these days, something that’s no less confusing (trust me). The Kindling
Quarterly is a handsome, perfect-bound, publication full of thoughtful essays.
David Michael Perez and P. August Heffner, the founders, sent me a copy in the
mail the other day, and I just started reading it last night.

I was drawn, quite naturally given my interest in food,
cooking, and this blog, to the interview with Rohan Anderson, the man behind
the blog Whole Larder Love. I might have had my head in a book for too long,
because I somehow did not know about Anderson’s blog.

He’s the father of two young girls (sound familiar?) but
he’s (how do I say this, ahem?) much more of a
man than I am. He hunts, gathers, gardens, forages, and does everything pretty
much damn well. He even published a book. Check it, and Kindling Quarterly out. Whether you are lost or not, they'll help you find your way. 

The Family Dinner  is suddenly more in the news
than usual. It was the subject of a recent NPR story, and Bon Appétit has a big
story this month devoted to how to pull it off.

Any reader of this blog will know that I’m a big supporter
of the family dinner, with one important caveat—it all depends on the family. I
spent countless family diners as a kid where all I did was stare at the clock
on the wall, and all the alleged benefits that come from eating
together—better grades, reduced drug abuse, a lower golf score (I made that
last one up)—turned out to be as real as the tooth fairy. At least in the
family I grew up in (some of us are terrible golfers, that’s all I’ll say).

I will say that food and cooking is the chief way I bring people
together, and I’m proud to do that. It means the world to me when we do sit
down together as a family and talk and laugh. We really have only one rule: No screens at the table (that goes for adults, too). And strive for a few other things: we try to wait until everyone is at the table to get started, and we clear our dishes at the end (the kids, too). These few little things can make a huge difference, at least to judge from the cacophony I heard on the NPR story. 

Check out the Bon Appétit feature, which has great tips from Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward (be sure to visit their excellent site:  Dinner A Love Story), and let me know what you
think. I can vouch for the Bon Appétit feature because it has a lot of ideas I use already—such as
making the most of my freezer, starting dinner in the morning, and keeping a
solid shop list. Any tips you want to add?

I’ve been busy with a few freelance projects this week, and
instead of a post about what I’ve been cooking around the house, I want to
mention a cool event that I’ve been invited to join. It’s called Beyond Bubbie,
and it’s a night of stories about food and family (and, of course,
grandmothers, as "Bubbie" is that word rendered in Yiddish). It is on January 16
at 7 p.m., at the 92Y Tribecca.

The MC is David Sax (Save the Deli), and the storytellers
include Mo Rocca ("My Grandmother’s Ravioli"), Carla Hall ("The
Chew"), Joan Nathan (a New York Times contributor and cookbook author),
Jake Dell (of Katz’s Deli), Alan Richman (a GQ food correspondent), Judy Batalion,
and Cantor Shira Ginsburg (of Bubby's Kitchen.)

If you have a good story about your grandmother, you might
be able to join everyone onstage. They’re taking submissions for one-minute stories, and if
they like yours, you get to tell it live. Email them at writetobubbie@gmail.com for more info. In the
meantime, I need to get back to working on my freelance projects, as well as
the story I’m going to tell that evening. And if you want to come, tickets and details can be found here.

Good parenting is all about good thinking, and at this time
of year, it is common for people to look forward and make resolutions about how
they will change their lives. Right now, though, I prefer to look back at what we’ve
accomplished. On the cooking front, I’ve added dozens and dozens of recipes to
my repertoire. Some were born of inspiration—I returned to entertaining and
threw a number of memorable dinner parties—and some were born of desperation—my
Jenn-Air oven is still on the fritz, and just the other day I made my
Broken-Oven Chicken Curry again, and I’m happy to report that it was just as
good this time as it was the first time around (Really–make it, you'll like it!). And this time, the girls ate
the chicken, which might not sound like much, but it is. Pinta, my youngest,
has an odd aversion to chicken, which to my mind is a bit ridiculous, but never
mind that. Yet when she had this chicken curry, she declared that the chicken
was “delicious.” Yes, Victory.

On the parenting front, we introduced weekly family meetings
and allowances for the children. I didn’t grow up with an allowance, and I’m
determined to give my children one, and for one reason only. Money is a tool,
like a pencil or a pen, and the only way to learn how to use it, save it, make
it, invest it, and spend it wisely, is to have some of your own. So they now
get two dollars a week, half of which they have to set aside for savings.

We also introduced more tasks for the children to do around
the house. Some might call these chores, but I avoid that noun (and these tasks
are not directly linked to the allowance because of Reason No. 1 for the
allowance itself). I frame the tasks as things the children need to do to make
life around the house better. I’m trying the “we’re all in it together,” kind
of approach, because, Lord knows, we are all in it together.

So far, this has proven to be remarkably beneficial. The
simple act of having a meeting every weekend in which the children can give
voice to what they want to do—from getting water for the table to setting the
table to putting away toys to folding laundry—makes a huge difference.
Children—like adults, too—like to be heard.

The system is somewhat new, so I might experience different
results shortly, but for now, it’s working almost too well. This evening, Nina
and Pinta were fighting over who could set the table (it was the younger one’s
job, but the older one wanted in on it, too.). Talk about being embarrassed by
riches. My kids were quarrelling over who could do a chore!

I tried to resolve this highly absurd tempest by suggesting that Nina make a centerpiece for the table. It would be nice to have one, I thought,
and it would give her some way of contributing. Unfortunately, I didn’t think
fast enough, and my suggestion didn’t fly. It wasn’t specific enough. I would
have done better to remember the night before, when Nina actually made some underwater origami
that we used to decorate the table. That would have been smart thinking.

What cooking or parenting accomplishment are you most happy with from
2012? I’m interested to hear about your experience at and around the dinner table. Drop me a line or make a comment, and let me know!