The first recipe I remember being aware of was photocopied handwriting on a wrinkled piece of paper that I received in Mrs. Sias’s first grade class and though I no longer have it, I know the recipe by heart:
Smiles
Ingredients:
1 Apple
Peanut Butter
Mini Marshmallows
Instructions:
Cut the apple into slices. Spread the peanut butter on one side of two different slices, put the marshmallows along one side of one slice, and cover with the second slice.
A demonstration of the creation was viewed and sampled in the classroom, and I deemed it outstanding both in taste and looks, so I brought the sheet home to my father and indicated my proclivity. He, thus notified, proceeded to have it waiting as an after school snack. I would come home from school, sit at the kitchen island, and chomp on them and tell my dad about my day.
One day, I came home to find this:
WHAT WAS THIS? Adding chocolate chips? I was dumbfounded. I demanded the rational. ”Call them braces” my dad shrugged.
I like to think that that moment was the beginning of my love for cooking. Until that moment, food simply appeared in front of me, as one whole item. As far as I knew, my pasta was picked off the tree already cooked with sauce. In that moment food became something that could me played with and shaped to one’s pleasing.
We eventually decided that the chocolate chips were a game-changer that rendered the marshmallows superfluous. I remember experimenting with other toppings over the years, from chocolate sauce (too messy) to M&M’s (which seem like a good idea on first glance but realistically just put a barrier between your taste buds and chocolate.)
My dad’s second brilliant innovation was this:
We named them mustaches and they may still be my favorite taste combination of all time. You will not avoid getting a bit messy as the peanut butter will slide from the banana, but once achieved, the sandwich is a concert of three distinct sweetnesses, proof positive that basic ingredients don’t need to be modified radically to enhance their flavor.
It’s incredible how our actions affect each other, isn’t it? Certainly I doubt my father set out to provoke a sea change in my feelings about food; most likely he simply got bored of making the same thing over and over again, and began to play.
The gift giving cliche is that it is the thought that counts: I’d argue that the statement goes double for food, as this simple dish that my dad gave me triggers such powerful thoughts of happy afternoons sitting and eating with my dad, and the dual culinary lessons of innovation and simplicity that sparked my passion for cooking.
Writer Note: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the apple slicer/corer that we had, and which I purchased for 2 dollars at the dollar store specifically for the writing of this post. It is useful for one insanely specific task, but it is so useful for that task that the specificity is overshadowed by the joy in ease of use.
Writer Note 2: Happy Birthday, Dad.