16 July, 2015

Welcome!

Comments : 1 Posted in : Uncategorized on July 16, 2015 by : johnyrocko

Here’s the story…

I was a very picky eater as a child. I hated mushrooms. I refused onions. Nary a vegetable I liked, much less enjoyed. But Mom’s cooking and her intense love of all kinds of food, from Fine Cuisine to Comfort Food Favorites, slowly began to expand my palate.

My Dad, rest his soul, would often tease Mom when she described a favorite meal because she was so enthusiastic in her description. “You sound orgasmic,” he would exclaim in faux disapproval. Dad may or may not have been exaggerating, but needless to say, Mom is very passionate about good food.

Dad travelled a lot visiting hospitals and lecturing around the world and Mom travelled with him sometimes, visiting Germany, France, China, Indonesia, British Columbia, among others, and she remembers all of them by the cuisine. A thin, fresh, delicious Margherita pizza in Florence, or an impressive multi-course banquet in Mainland China. I remember her telling me about eating jellyfish for the first time in China and said she imagined it was like eating rubber bands. “You just chew and chew and chew and it doesn’t go anywhere.”

Her love of food comes out of respect for the act of cooking. Particularly because she cooked 99.99% of my Dad’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner for their entire marriage. And Dad was pretty particular about his food. Every morning it was fried eggs, crisp bacon, fried potatoes, dark toast, tomato juice, water, fresh melon or berries, and the hottest coffee, immediately after it was done brewing.

He regularly walked home for lunch.

Then there was dinner.

Just a few months after they got married in 1968, she was not only making his breakfast lunch and dinner, but was making it for her three stepchildren who came to live with them.  In the next few years came my brother and me, which increased the nightly mouths to feed to 7. But there were always more people than that.

When we lived in Swarthmore, PA from 1969-1971, many of my Dad’s relatives would stop in, as well as neighbors and friends and coworkers. When we lived in Edmund, Oklahoma (from 1971-1980), where Dad started the Pulmonary Intensive Care Department at the University of Oklahoma, he would frequently bring people home for dinner with little warning. If there was a call first, there was barely enough time to go to the store. “Oh, by the way,“ he would say, “so-and-so is coming to dinner tonight… and they’re bringing their kids.” Click!

I think it’s because of all this time in the kitchen that she has a unique respect and understanding for the act of cooking itself, and why she is so passionate about food that is prepared well and tastes delicious. Mom gets a deep satisfaction when she knows people are enjoying her food, because she puts so much love into the preparation of the meal.

Naturally, in this environment, my tastebuds matured and developed despite some food allergies (some I’ve outgrown, and some are still going strong #epipen) and I now have a broad, diverse taste in foods. In seeing how passionately Mom would reminisce about a Margherita Pizza in Tuscany, or the Shoe-Fly Pie in her hometown of Sunbury, PA or fresh Beignets and coffee at the Café Du Monde in New Orleans, made me want to love food like that. And I do.

In this Blog I’d like to convey some of that passion about food that Mom and I have and share some memories, some recipes, and a review or two.

Thank you so much for visiting!

Please come again!