Creating Shared History

We have a picture of our kids eating peaches on the beach in Melides, Portugal. The dunes are behind them and they are both staring out at the ocean, peaches in hand, juice running down their chins. The truth is that I haven’t looked at that picture in over a year. I don’t need to because the memory is so clear that I can almost smell the salt in their hair, feel the warmth of their bodies, and can almost taste those peaches as if I’d eaten one myself. Each day we spent there began the same way – making lunch to take to the beach. My family recently traveled to Orlando for the Family Forward retreat and during a workshop for Barilla’s Share The Table, Daniele Baliani, Barilla’s guest chef, recalled the days his family spent at the beach – a blanket laid out on the sand, simple food to be shared - and as he spoke, those memories from our time in Melides came back to me.

While offering ideas to help families make mealtime more meaningful, Chef Baliani led families in making a simple pasta salad reminiscent of those his family used to share on the beach. Each family received a tray with all the necessary ingredients and my kids began by tasting – a piece of basil, a sun dried tomato, a finger dipped into olive oil, a penne noodle popped into a mouth distractedly – and then began following instructions. I gave the occasional suggestion but watched as they made decisions together – add all the sun dried tomatoes but only a few red peppers – and worked together to make our meal, negotiating who would hold the bowl and who would stir. And as we sat down to eat, I realized how often we talked about the benefits of working together to prepare a meal in the simplest of terms. We emphasized fun, cooperation and responsibility and those are tremendous benefits. But more than that, when we prepare and share a meal together, we are creating our family’s history. The sights and smells and tastes, our hands joined in work – these become a part of who we are.

Every time I snap fresh green beans, I think of my mother, of hot Kansas summers and our hands working through a pile of beans together. My daughter says her favorite meal is stroganoff because it’s the meal she makes with Luisa, and I hope she’ll someday remember standing on a step stool to cut onions, the way the steam from the boiling water felt on her face and the way they carefully placed the pasta in the pot. I know my son already has some of those kind of memories because every Thanksgiving, he says, “Well, I always make the cranberry sauce…”

Each of us have our favorite memories from our trip to Orlando. Miguel loved the roller coasters and his giant Lard Lad donut. Zeca loved searching for penny machines to press pennies with all the Universal characters. Luisa loved every moment she got to spend in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I loved that we were able to be together without the distraction of our everyday responsibilities and I hope to hold on to the revelations I had while making a simple pasta salad with my kids.

These shared experiences bond us together now and will serve us all in the future as well. These are the times we’ll look back on and ask each other, “Remember when…”

This is a sponsored post on behalf of Barilla, however, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive sentiments towards Barilla or their products.

Featured Photo Credit: Vikki Reich

Cooking Shows Are Destroying My Family

It all started late last summer when we discovered that our son was sneaking onto Netflix and watching countless episodes of Cake Boss. I should have been concerned when he wrote us a letter informing us that he knew "everything there is to know about cakes" which meant that he was qualified to design our wedding cake. But his interest seemed harmless - even adorable - and we had no idea that Cake Boss was only the beginning, the gateway show to Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen and The Next Great Baker and even the YouTube channel Nerdy Nummies and somewhere along the line, Zeca joined in this culinary crusade. This summer, they have said things like, "You don't understand! We want to really bake!", "We are not interested in everyday cooking!", "We want to create something special!" While I encouraged the basics, they requested fondant and angled spatulas and special piping tips for icing. When I suggested they make pesto for dinner, they said they would consider Fettucini Alfredo with pan-seared shrimp because anything simple was beneath them. So, under attack from these culinary crusaders, I acquiesced and told them they could bake whatever they wanted provided they worked together and then washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen afterwards. They joyfully agreed.

And so the troubles began...

Why make a sandwich when you can create a double decker lettuce, tomato, parmesan sandwich held together by a neon plastic sword?

What is not pictured? The trail of parmesan cheese from the kitchen to the dining room. Hansel and Gretel were amateurs with their bread crumbs!

Why decorate a cake with candy sprinkles when you can make your own glass candy?

Not pictured: The glass candy slivers that melted all over the front stoop after they smashed the candy with a hammer.

Why should they have to learn to frost a cake? That's why the Gods of Baking made fondant - it hides imperfections!

This was the first cake of two that I had to repair with my very basic frosting skills that I did not learn on a television cooking show.

The second cake they made together ended in a huge argument in which the two kids screamed at each other over the following:

• One of them didn't even think to preheat the oven (Miguel)
• They did not level the cakes (Miguel)
• The piped icing was too runny (Zeca)
• The piping was uneven (Zeca)

I came downstairs to mediate but Zeca had already locked herself in the bathroom and Miguel was alleging that she had punched him and run. Their fighting triggers something deep and dark inside of me so I started yelling and, once Zeca came out of the bathroom, I gave them a lecture that ended with the best maternal comfort I had to offer, "Someday, we'll be dead and all you will have is each other. You better learn to get along."

Then, just last week, I heard Miguel call from the kitchen, "Um…mom…I think I need a little help…" I went down to find that he had opened the Joy of Cooking and was several steps into making a Souffléd Omelette. The kid can't fry an egg but was in the process of trying to make something with the word soufflé in it! We didn't have the proper baking dish and I suggested that we quickly melt some butter in a casserole dish on the stove which was a horrible idea because the dish exploded, leaving my entire kitchen covered in shards of glass. I spent the next half hour picking up buttery glass bits and breathing deeply to avoid yelling and sounding like an asthmatic rhinoceros in the process. A week later and we are still finding pieces of glass in rooms adjacent to the kitchen.

The thing about catastrophes is they do give perspective. I told him that he could not attempt a souffléd anything until he was able to prepare eggs at least three ways - fried, over easy, and scrambled. I said, "You have to crawl before you can walk," and he misread every single social cue in the situation that should have told him to keep his mouth shut and said, "Actually, I have quite a few friends who walked before they crawled." The rhinoceros returned and I gritted my teeth, "You have to crawl before you can walk. You have to frost before you can pipe. You have to fry a damn egg before you soufflé."

If we are not successful in banning cooking shows in our home, we might just have our own reality show soon enough.

Tiny Bridges

This morning, I went through a bag of school work that Zeca had brought home at the end of the year. Yes, I realize school ended weeks ago but she had tucked it into her closet and then, when asked to clean her room last week, she dumped it in my room. She waved her hand and said, "Go through this and keep the best for my portfolio…" as she left the room. There are often treasures in these bundles of papers, words and glimpses of who they are, the bigger picture. Zeca's report on John Adams was in this bag and I laughed as I read her conclusion, "John died in 1826 but I will always remember him." There is so much Zeca in that sentence - the familiarity, the dramatic touch - I will tuck that report into the file folder I keep in the top of my closet.

And then I found a tiny bridge made of popsicle sticks and toothpicks.

I remember her telling me about the project, about how much harder it was to make a bridge than she thought. She worked with a friend and I remember her saying that it fell apart and they had to start over but then I never heard about it again. But, they obviously finished and I held it in my hand to appreciate it fully. It had survived being shoved in a paper bag - a paper bag that was then thrown in a closet and then thrown in a corner and then thrown on my bed this morning. And, as I was taking pictures of this tiny marvel today, I dropped it on the floor.

I held my breath, worried that this tiny bridge that had been rebuilt by small hands and had survived it's long journey from school to home would shatter at my feet but it bounced and came to rest on the hardwood floor perfectly intact.

When Zeca got home, I held the bridge in my hand and told her that she had done a good job. She said, "Well, it's ugly and wax paper stuck on the points but we tried to build it strong." I told her she succeeded and said, "Do you want to know how I know?" She said, "You dropped it." Damn that kid knows me.

I don't generally keep things my kids make that can't be slipped easily into a file folder but I find myself wanting to hold on to the tiny bridge. Maybe I just want to remember that, sometimes, things aren't as fragile as they seem.

PHOTO CREDITS: VIKKI REICH