Tuesday, July 3, 2018

What Daddy Likes

Heidi and I both have Upstate New York roots: she grew up in Buffalo and my dad was a Little Falls boy, born and bred just a couple hours east. It makes for a compelling cultural confluence; there are just so many vaguely familiar elements to the time we spend up here that something almost always seems to conjure up my dad.

For example last night we were talking about food we ate as children and lost family recipes. "My mother made a goulash that Gary loved," Louise told us, "but we've never been able to recreate it. He's always excited when he sees it on the menu, but he's always disappointed."

This conversation came at the end of a story about how the family was so poor when she was growing up that Louise's mother made spaghetti sauce first with ketchup, and then with tomato soup. "The first time I had real spaghetti I couldn't stop eating it," she told us."It was so much better than anything we ever had!"

"My dad used to love goulash when I was little," I said, "and it was made with, guess what? Tomato soup! I wonder..."

"Oh my gosh!" Louise interrupted. "Maybe tomato soup was the secret ingredient!"

"It makes sense," I replied. "I do know how to make it. It was one of the first things I learned to cook, along with creamed chipped beef, because they were my dad’s favorites."

Guess what's on the menu for Thursday?

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