My Father Was Served: The Hard Working American Culture

“The first thousand times are hard, after that, it’s easy.” That was my father’s favorite quote to say to me whether I was practicing for a sports team, studying for a test, or cooking with him in the kitchen. My father and mother taught me many life lessons without them even knowing it through their rhythm and ritual. Rhythm and ritual are two things that go hand in hand but have been separated in my family. With my parents divorce, this separation of the two has become more apparent. As my mother uses food as rhythm, my father honors it more with ritual. This idea was first introduced to me in Douglas Bauer’s book, What Was Served. He used it to illustrate the roles of his own mother and father. M.F.K. Fisher also analyzes her parents in her book, The Gastronomical Me. After reading these two excerpts, it is easy to see how

My mother was Jewish and chose to raise me as Jewish. Since my father was not Jewish and he was the only one cooking, we didn’t have stereotypical Jewish food very often. Even when we did have latkes for Chanukah or brisket for Passover, it was with my Dad’s own French influenced spin on it. My father’s dominance in the kitchen was present as he would take Jewish foods and make them his own. This is where honoring food with ritual really came into play. Since he was trained as a professional French chef, most of the meals I had growing up were amazing creamy soups or savory sauces. The meals that he created always had his signature style to it and would differ from the norm. This taught me to have a distinct pallet different from my Jewish peers. I was overjoyed to be introduced to various amounts of different foods that my friends didn’t know about or wish they could have. It also become obvious that among my friends, sleeping over at my house became a popular choice just so they could enjoy my father’s