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As a child, I was always a picky eater. Didn’t really like food. A wash-down of chocolate milk was sufficient to end hunger pangs, then, a mad dash for the door. There were forts to build, games to play, kites to fly, and endless sidewalks to skate down. That was the early 50’s. No fast food, no pizza deliveries, not even frozen TV dinners were around too much then. But my father always loved food and loved making it as much as eating it. He was the son of German immigrants and he grew up poor. He told us about trying to trade off goose grease sandwiches his mama would give him for his school lunch. It bothered my father when his children would not eat the meals he worked so lovingly to prepare. No recipes then. He never had one and never wrote one down. But he always knew just what each dish needed to be perfect every time. One of his favorite things to cook was a hearty and spicy beef stew. My big sister and me would sit at our places at the table and look at our bowls of steaming concoction. Big chucks of potatoes and carrots would be revealed upon a stir of the warm orangey colored broth that was also filled with mysterious inedibles. Bay leaves peeked through and black peppercorns lurked below and would always end up in a spoon warranting their tedious removal. So, to entice us to eat, my father would tell his two little girls the story of the three bears and how Goldilocks came upon their cottage in the woods and ultimately devoured their bowls of “Bear Soup” that sat cooling on their kitchen table. It worked like a charm. And I discovered that orange liquid glop…. was quite good, quite good indeed. My father made Bear Soup until he was too old to cook. I finally made a point of watching him make dozens of his famous meals and wrote down the procedures as best as I could. A “little of this” and “more of that” came together for me and I made Bear Soup for my children many times. They didn’t know why it was called Bear Soup for a long time. They were enthusiastic eaters and I never needed to tell them any stories to entice them to eat. Today, my dad is gone but my children and my sister’s children all love Bear Soup. I know I could streamline a lot of the procedures he used to make the stew but it is a labor of love that perpetuates the making of the dish exactly as he would have liked it done. What are YOU making right now that your children will be remembering? "When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It is also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be." ---Molly Wizenberg

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Bear Soup

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As a child, I was always a picky eater. Didn’t really like food. A wash-down of chocolate milk was sufficient to end hunger pangs, then, a mad dash for the door. There were forts to build, games to play, kites to fly, and endless sidewalks to skate down. That was the early 50’s. No fast food, no pizza deliveries, not even frozen TV dinners were around too much then. But my father always loved food and loved making it as much as eating it. He was the son of German immigrants and he grew up poor. He told us about trying to trade off goose grease sandwiches his mama would give him for his school lunch. It bothered my father when his children would not eat the meals he worked so lovingly to prepare. No recipes then. He never had one and never wrote one down. But he always knew just what each dish needed to be perfect every time. One of his favorite things to cook was a hearty and spicy beef stew. My big sister and me would sit at our places at the table and look at our bowls of steaming concoction. Big chucks of potatoes and carrots would be revealed upon a stir of the warm orangey colored broth that was also filled with mysterious inedibles. Bay leaves peeked through and black peppercorns lurked below and would always end up in a spoon warranting their tedious removal. So, to entice us to eat, my father would tell his two little girls the story of the three bears and how Goldilocks came upon their cottage in the woods and ultimately devoured their bowls of “Bear Soup” that sat cooling on their kitchen table. It worked like a charm. And I discovered that orange liquid glop…. was quite good, quite good indeed. My father made Bear Soup until he was too old to cook. I finally made a point of watching him make dozens of his famous meals and wrote down the procedures as best as I could. A “little of this” and “more of that” came together for me and I made Bear Soup for my children many times. They didn’t know why it was called Bear Soup for a long time. They were enthusiastic eaters and I never needed to tell them any stories to entice them to eat. Today, my dad is gone but my children and my sister’s children all love Bear Soup. I know I could streamline a lot of the procedures he used to make the stew but it is a labor of love that perpetuates the making of the dish exactly as he would have liked it done. What are YOU making right now that your children will be remembering? "When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It is also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be." ---Molly Wizenberg

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