My dad was the one that made penuche in our family. That's my favorite kind of fudge. He made that and popcorn - the kind where you poured the kernels into a big pot with a little oil. Those two things I have no recollection of my mother ever making. My dad is not big on cooking, but he was the king of making penuche and popcorn!

Lori

My father's specialty was fried rice that included bits of scrambled eggs - he doesn't make it anymore. Always made pepper steak in the electric skillet and was the weekend breakfast maker.

He taught me to run to the front porch to see who was first in getting the milk bottle and stealing taking the cream from the top of the milk for our bran flakes.
It drove my mom wild as she said we were left with 'blue milk'.

At one point, both dad and I grew up and left it alone. :-)

SharonCb

Always made us fried bologna and canned beans when Mom wasn't home to cook. Thankfully she was rarely gone.

He was also the star BBQ'er, at least in his mind. He would light the BBQ while my Mom prepared everything then sip on a bottle of beer, tending the meat until Mom said it was done. LOL

Makes egg nog Christmas Eve. That and drying the dishes are the only food-related things I've ever seen him do.

My DD was the breakfast king.. made the coffee and everything else. My DM has never been a morning person.

Nancy

Perfect Timing - thanks for starting this.
My Dad taught me to garden & to try new plantings. Every year he would plant something new - one year corn, another a different kind of sting bean, one year he let me pick, we planted goosberries & currents.
He always dug & made horseradish for Easter (red & white).
Was the King of Sunday breakfast - French Toast, Pancakes, Fritata's.
His specialty dinner/lunch dish was cut up hot dogs fried with onions & peppers. The "sauce" was usually ketchup sometimes leftover tomato sauce - depends what was in the fridge.
Specialty desert - jello. I remember standing on the stool next to the stove - he let me stir as he put in the powder.
When we were older it was baked apples w/brown sugar & cinnamon.
I remember one time the apples tasted funny and we complained - he told us stop and just eat them. Then he tried one - came to find out he used cayenne instead of cinnimon (LOL - the spice tins all looked the same). I always check when I add any seasoning.

Potato soup made in a pressure cooker. Potatoes, celery, carrots. Margarine and canned milk stirred in to make it creamy. I use butter and heavy cream.

Growing up, the only time I spent with my dad was walking along Lake Erie beach on Sabbath afternoon. Mom would drop us off at one end of the beach and pick us up at the other end because she didn't want to walk. I found out later she would meet a BF while we were walking. The lake was polluted. Stinky, dead fish and drift wood were scattered along the beach. It didn't matter to me. I still treasure those memories. I'd take that walk with my dad in a heart beat if he could walk that far.

My dad wasn't much of a cook except maybe eggs and pancakes, but whenever I didn't want to eat my veggies, he'd tell me to eat them, that they'd put hair on my chest...LOL, just what every little girly girl wants to hear!!

...bakes tons of goodies for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He loves sweets so I think he does it mostly for him! He usually makes fruit cake (yuck!) and 4-5 types of cookies. He taught me to be a nice and good person. He never did much cooking until my mom went blind and then he was suddenly in charge of everything except microwaved stuff. He did pretty good and never complained. But my mom would always say "We only eat once a day in this house!" ..and she was right. He could be content to eat sweets to fill in the gaps before dinner time.

I was blessed with two great parents who I love very much. My mom is gone now but my dad is still around. I hang with him as much as I can....watching movies and t.v. My dad was pretty much on his own growing up. At the age of 5 he went to the movies by himself! Can you imagine that today! He loves the Detroit Tigers so we sit and watch games together quite a bit. I started my own business so I could spend more time with him that I would be able to working a 9-5 job.

One of my favorite memories was on friday nights my dad would drop my mom off at Chatham's to do the grocery shopping and next door was a bowling alley. We would bowl while my mom shopped. Then we would go to the Sanders on the other side of the grocery store for a sundae. Then we usually went and got carry out burgers and shakes for dinner. Gosh! We ate a lot! We had it good. We can't go back but we do have our memories. Good stuff! Thanks for starting this one Linda!

Duane

Dad managed two cooking-related activities. First, he was in charge of BBQ'ing steaks (not chicken or burgers...just steaks) and second, he turned the crank on the July 4th homemade ice cream. That's it.

If he wanted a drink...one of us were expected to bring him the glass of water, wait until he'd had his fill, & then return the glass to the kitchen. I will never forget the first phone call I received from him after Mom was killed. He called just to ask, "Where are the water glasses?" He'd lived in that home a long time.

Rather than learn to cook, he became a serial groom. He went through 4-6 wives (would have to go look them up & count 'em to be sure?) within 5 years of Mom's death. He finally hit on his old secretary & they stayed together until their deaths. She assumed the duty of providing Dad with whatever he wanted/needed to drink/eat.

Brings back another memory...we would never eat supper before Dad got home from work. He would arrive with great fanfare...honking the car horn in the driveway, walking to the front door (keys still in hand), & ringing the doorbell to be let inside the house. Then, we waited until he'd done 'whatever' for about 30 minutes before eating. Nobody sat down at the table until Dad was seated & nobody left the table without being excused...again, by Dad. After dinner, Dad went to the living room & sat down in his chair while the rest of us cleaned up. By the time the kitchen was clean...Dad was asleep in his chair. He'd wake up after a couple hours wanting his ice cream. Mom served it to him still in his chair...a nightly ritual. I HATE ice cream!

Dad forced me to eat foods I detested. I know that some of my refusal to eat certain foods today go back to Dad's rough-handed techniques for making sure I'd 'cleaned my plate'. It is my practice today to always leave food on my plate...just for spite. In fairness, he was from an immigrant family who came of age in the Depression Era, worked extremely hard to provide food for his family sometimes not knowing where our next meal would come from, & as an adult it's easier to understand his attitudes. Understand, or not, I raised our children different.

/tricia

My dad cooked great steaks, on the grill or in the broiler and many times bake an onion to go with it. He also was a very good fisherman and could fry fish like no one else could, well except his mom. He also would eat anything I cooked while I was young and learning to cook and praised it regardless of its outcome.

I have alot of fond memories of being on the farms with my dad when he was a farmer, especially irrigation times as there were no sprinkler systems then and irrigation ditches were the standard. Vacations in the mountains in Colorado fishing or on some lake, always. He loved the water and I loved being with him. I still miss him dearly.

My dad also had limited cooking skills. He made poached eggs and toast every day for breakfast, along with giant glasses of orange juice, water and coffee (he must have had a bladder like a camel!).

He was the assigned master of the grill. He insisted that steaks been done on the grill no matter what the weather and would stand outside in the snow and howling wind grilling the steaks.

He also loved ice cream and had a bowl every night which he managed to get for himself. He also made milkshakes often.

Growing up the '50's, we always waited for Dad to get home before we had dinner. I swear I still start to salivate at the sound of a jingling car keys, which he did as he walked in the back door.

We also knew he had wrecked the car when he walked in the front door. It was very strange to have him come in the front. He was a surgeon and was called to the hospital at all hours. Sometimes he was too sleepy to be driving and other times the weather was very bad so he managed to wreck several cars, fortunately without injury to himself or others.

He was a fun but somewhat unavailable father when I was young. I have wonderful memories of life with him when I was a young child.

We moved to a large home when I was 13 and after that things changed. I don't know if it was because I was no longer a little kid or his work changed or what, but after that we grew apart. When he was in his early sixties he left the family for a young nurse. I was 30. After that I did not have much of a relationship with him.

I went to his retirement party and everyone from the hospital told me what a great guy and special person he was. I wanted to say -- that's nice, but I wouldn't know.

Anyway, maybe I shouldn't be posting this here. Sometimes the relationship between dads and daughters (and sons!) can be strained. I feel so bad that I wasn't able to have a close relationship with him. I truly believe he was a great guy.

I am grateful for the early years we had together and all the fun. I can't look at a poached egg without thinking of him!

ummm.... most was not food related! Though he was the grill master, he shared those duties with Mom. The one thing he did cook was French Onion Soup. YUM!!!

Often he was working when we kids were eating. When we did eat together, We had our assigned places, and I was on his right (Mom on his left). He used family dinners for lessons. At the dinner table he used to give my younger sister and I two numbers. I had to multiply them, and she had to add them. We also learned Archimedes' Principle. I can still envision the guy jumping out of the bath yelling Eureka!! (google it). And Bernoulli's principle. I can't ever remember that one... Something to do with Physics...

To show Archimedes principle he would wad up his napkin and toss it in our unguarded waterglass (or my mother's cleavage, but I don't think that was about physics).

I came home from the hospital on my Father's first Father's day...

My father also taught me about loving nature, being responsible for our environment and introduced me to Rachel Carson. He was a chemical engineer when the industry was much-maligned, and his job was risk management and environmental health and safety. He would jog/walk the 5 hilly miles around our house in CT and pick up trash along the way (once he even got some unopened beer he put in the downstairs fridge that no one would drink....)

He took all of us all over the world with his job, and he made sure we got to see things we would not have otherwise seen. We lived in Hong Kong and Australia in the 70's. He also took tons of pictures. I learned not to hide from a camera, to just ignore it. Hiding my face would just make him mad. When my brother died in February we went through of thousands of pictures that Dad had taken over the years. We scanned a bunch for DB's young sons and had a lot of good laughing and crying over those pics, helping us through.

In his later years, before his 6-way bypass, he was a vegan. I learned to cook some awesome vegetarian dishes because of him... though I've never been able to quite adopt his menu choices completely.

Dad didn't cook a lot, but he did the prep work. He'd snap a bushel of beans without batting an eye, if I'd can them (Stepmom hates canning). Ditto with peeling tomatoes or shucking corn.

Dad would make himself eggs and potatoes occasionally, and only if necessary, but if left to fend for himself usually just had peanut butter sandwiches until someone came home to cook, LOL.

Dad did teach me that my own fresh eggs were way better than the store bought ones, that crust is the best part of the bread, that I can grow nearly anything if I want to fuss over it enough, LOL. He taught me to field dress a deer and that even porcupine is good if properly cooked and you're hungry enough.

He also taught me, though his own bad habits and health issues, to avoid the butter dish most of the time, that sweets should be an occasional treat, that vegetables should be a bigger part of supper and meat a smaller part.

He taught me to fish, he taught me to reach under a hen for fresh eggs and if I get pecked, it's just a chicken, I probably won't die, LOL. He taught me to use last year's manure on this years garden, although he didn't call it compost. He told me "if you rest, you rust". He taught me to work hard, take care of my family, be willing to share anything I have, that technology is wonderful but most things still can be done by hand, the hard way, if necessary.

He taught me to look for the beauty in everything, and to be thankful for it, and that I should protect and respect the forest and the fields and the waters that I love so much. He taught me that life was hard, usually, and that I should "get my chin up and get on with it".

Right or wrong, he taught me that we never cry, and if we do we do it in private where no one can see and we don't admit it. No signs of weakness were ever allowed. That's the one thing that I've tried not to pass on to my children.

Annie

Lordy but I miss that man--he was the one who kept telling me I could be anything I wanted to be as long as I was willing to work my butt off & stayed true to family values.

He also taught me to :
garden
make sausage
sweet pickle a ham , corn a round, recognize leeks in the woods,start a wood fire, love sweet onion sandwiches on homemade bread-- ditto mustard, butter & sugar sandwiches--
always drink my whiskey with water, no soda etc if I wanted to avoid a hangover.

He also taught me to hunt & gun safety, how to milk a cow, recognize a good steak in a butchers counter;how to use a hammer-saw-screwdriver & duct tape;how to pluck & dress a chicken;how to make bean soup & cook over an open fire; how to work hard & make do or do without; how to play pedro, pinochle & poker; to never pass on gossip; a love of animals & the outdoors.

He taught me to enjoy life-- cry when needed--keep private things private & within the family;take responsibility for my own actions and that there's nothing as important as family.

Told us how he had to walk five miles to school in a West Va winter. My dad never even touched a skillet , let alone the stove. My dad was not a foodie . My dad taught me how not to be operating something when I am upset. I was not close to my dad. He passed away in 1996, and I did not cry at the funeral, I had cried all my tears in the months leading up to the funeral. My dad was not my favorite parent.

...taught me how to make meatballs and gravy (sauce)
....taught me how to make a fantastic Pizza Rustic
....taught me how to make shrimp with prosciutto and mozzarella in a white wine/chicken reduction
.....taught me how to make the best lemon, garlic, and lemon thyme grilled chicken

Sue

Mine dipped strawberries in the sugar bowl, leaving nasty pink crystals he'd eat later.

... expected my mother to cook.

But he taught me how to fix most of the things in the house and build stuff, plant a garden and change a tire, how to swim and row a boat, and fish. He gave me my love of travel and country music, Maine, the ocean and lobster.

He died six years ago, at the age of 91, and I still miss him terribly.

fed me ice cream on waffle sandwiches for breakfast, steak and grilled onion sandwiches for lunch, and forced me to eat Chunky bars (am I dating myself). Hated those chunky bars, but he loved them and couldn't have them!

My father (born in 1909) was very much the Victorian-era man - who did nothing in the kitchen except eat. He'd happily sit and watch a kettle boil over, and call out to my mother (hanging clothes on the line, perhaps, or scrubbing floors) to come in and do something about it. In the days of our wood stove, he wouldn't even chop the wood for the fire. Such things were Woman's Work.

I made the sad mistake of marrying two men (not at the same time!) of like mind.

I did learn from my father some of the joys and skills of growing your own veges, however. THAT wasn't beneath his dignity! Neither of my husbands had even that saving grace.

I made sure my son had at least survival-level culinary skills!

One time when Mother was in the hospital, Dad made pea soup. EEEEEWWWWW! It was awful. He was not a cook! I hate it to this day.

...was glad to see me. He would wake me up with kisses and invite me to have breakfast with him; he made the best hash browns, onions, eggs and bacon. I married the man who did the same thing for me my dad did, and am still glad to have him! It's funny, we had that breakfast over the weekend, a real comfort meal and talked about him. Thanks for asking me to remember my Dad, Linda!

Every week my dad would cook up a pot of Greek-style Great Northern beans or garbanzos for his lunches. He'd divide up the beans into five large jars and keep them on the top shelf of the refrigerator. He was a barber and owned his own shop. He had a hot plate & small saucepan in the back of his shop to heat up the beans. The beans with a big chunk of French bread were his daily lunch.

He was so proud of his beans that he'd always cook up a special batch whenever he had a doctor appointment. He'd bring the doctor and his nursing staff some freshly made bean soup for their lunches. They always appreciated the gesture and told him how much they enjoyed the beans.

My Dad was the fried chicken king in our house! I still use his recipe to this day only he used Crisco before they took out the trans-fats, which IMHO was the worst idea ever, it changes everything! My dad also made the best Sunday breakfasts. His scrapple was cooked to perfection! He also taught me to fish and garden! We would practice casting for hours in the back yard. he'd put coins in a coffee can and if we managed to cast into the can we got the money! I remember being young and trying to make a pie crust, I was having trouble with it and he came in worked his magic and it came out perfect. My dad passed away 13 yrs. ago and I miss him terribly. Any time I smell Old Spice I could just cry, it's the only after shave he ever wore! Thank you for starting this! So many memories are flooding back! Gina

My dad, gone 6 years now, didn't cook, either, except I suppose on the grill, so I suppose my real food memories of him are outside the kitchen:
1) deciding together that the absolute perfect lunch is soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a chocolate malt (the cheese and ice cream are always great and the malt is always fresh in Milwaukee)
2) grocery shopping with him on the rare occasions my mom couldn't. He would go up and down every aisle and ask, "Which kind do we get?" at every stop -- so we filled up the cart with chips, candy, salami, soda ... I never did know if he was indulging us or just had no idea how to shop. We knew better, but we weren't going to pass that up!

He was a builder, and he taught me some very valuable things, including a few that are especially useful in this economy:

1) "What is my property worth?" What you can get someone to pay you the day you need to sell it. All the rest -- estimates, Zillow, appraisals, etc. -- are numbers on a piece of paper; remember that before you rely on them too much. What goes up, must come down. Always.

2) No one ever hits you in the face for asking.

3) Stay calm and persevere when the going gets tough. Make the most of whatever cards you are dealt (and that included his Alzheimer's diagnosis). Know what you are doing before you start, and don't second guess yourself.

4) Integrity is priceless. He was by far the littlest fish in a group of builders from around the country, most of whom were really big deals -- but he was the one they all looked up to.

Lindac, thanks for this opportunity to "visit" his memory and to enjoy reading about everyone else's great dads. Happy Fathers Day to all.

My Dad, who was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war, made us the most delicious breakfasts (that my Mom would never even touch). He'd cook ground beef in a skillet, 80% of course, scoop the meat out of the skillet, fry white bread in all the burger grease, and pull the bread out. Then he'd make the standard SOS sauce, add the beef back, and pour the artery-clogging delicacy on top of our grease-soaked toast. LOL! We loved it.

He also had the most fantastic bbq sauce recipe that he pulled from a Southern Living magazine back in the early 80's, that was a mustard base. I can't find or replicate it, but it was the best I've ever had.

And he made a mean curry dip that he served with crudites.

His mother was born and raised in Alabama, so we got some good exposure to Southern food from my Dad.

My dad knew absolutely nothing about cooking, but, he always knew the best restaurants in town.
However, dad taught me how to catch my own food, by showing me how to set a hook, and fish to my heart's content. And, we all hoped mom would prepare the day's catch.

Dad also taught me how to build sandcastles. Every weekend my brother and I would pack up our gear (sand pail and shovel) and hit a different beach on the island, in order to test its sand-molding abilities.
We'd have a little contest between my brother and I, to see who could build the coolest sandcastle. And it never mattered that my sculptures resembled the state of Kentucky after a deadly tornado. Dad always beamed at his little princess' creations.

Our parting gifts were lots of fun memories, a nice tan, and sand in our pants.

Dad also sang to me, every night, at bedtime. This is my favorite childhood memory. Thanks Papi.

Sol

Sorry I missed this post when I made the new one:) This one fell off to page 3 already, busy people posting. Cutting and pasting my post:

I thought with Father's day coming up I would post about what we learned about cooking and kitchen work from our fathers. Funny, both my dad and his dad were great cooks. Grandpa would make the best fudge, pies, and peanut butter cookies. When he would make scrambled eggs they were called Gandy eggs, don't know why, but would fry up some left over bacon, ham, potatoes, sausage, or onions and then pour the eggs over the top. What ever was left over was thrown in. My dad and I do the same thing.

Another thing I learned is about looking in the pantry and not being afraid to experiment with what is in there. Just throwing things together can work and I do that at the end of the month or when I haven't gotten out to the grocery. Also that you can make soup out of just about anything, clean out the fridge, look in the garden, look in the pantry. My dad is forever trying new soups and they are always different depending what is on hand. I also learned from my dad and grandpa how to make dumplings and homemade noodles. It only takes me 10 minutes to make(longer if Peyton and Hayden and Rhiannon are helping, and if Dan doesn't eat the dough) and they are so good. Also learned to make a big roast or chicken on Sunday and eat on the left overs through the week and throw the rest in the freezer. Ham means ham for one meal, ham sandwiches, ham and scalloped potatoes, ham and eggs, ham and beans with the ham bone, ham and pasta and the left over in the freezer. With 4 kids and staying at home I have to make money count and have to be inventive, which thank goodness I got from my dad and grandpa.

Stacie
gig

Mine wasn't much of a cook. But he did make a mean Denver Scramble with Dijon mustard!! He called it an omelet, but it was scrambled, not folded over!

He taught me to try different foods before deciding whether I liked them or not. He hunted, so we had elk and venison, we raised beef, butchered our own chickens.

Not many "parts" went to waste. Liver, heart, tongue and "unmentionables" all made it to the table.

He taught me to saddle a horse, gun safety, personal responsibility, and that there was his opinion and "wrong". LOL

The rules were the rules. They were not up for negotiation!

Unfortunately, he passed away young at 52 from a brain aneurysm (sp?)just as we were moving from a Parent/Child relationship to Adult-to-Adult.

I miss him lots, especially during thunderstorms.

Deanna

When I was 5 years old, my mother packed us up and moved 3000 miles away from my father and didn't leave a forwarding address. 25 years later, I found him, and moved in with him and his wife (a wonderful woman, who became one of my closest friends) for a year in order to get to know them as family rather than acquaintances one visits once in a while.

My stepmother couldn't get over how alike we were, in temperament, tastes, and a variety of idiosyncratic behaviors. One day, she came home from doing some errands to find us sitting at the kitchen table lunching on thick slabs of his beefsteak tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt & pepper. bread and butter rounding out the meal. Regarding me with a rather dryly amused expression, she said, "I guess I know whose daughter YOU are!"

The one food I actually associate with my father in childhood memory is yellow apples. All my life, if I ate a yellow apple, I thought of him, and no matter how good it tasted, there was something missing.

After my mother divorced him, he would pick me up on Saturday and find somewhere to take me where we could simply hang out. One of our favorite spots was off a country road, where there was a very old, gnarled apple tree. In season, we would sit there and eat apples together, and discuss whatever weighty subjects children under the age of 5 discuss with their fathers. The apples were yellow, and no apple has ever tasted as good since.

Our first meeting when I was an adult, I arranged to have in a restaurant. I was nervous and wanted a neutral ground. By the end of dinner, he convinced me to drive with him a short way to his home, so I could meet his wife, who was waiting up and hoping I would come. I followed him in my car, and at a certain spot, on a dark country road, he slowed, honked his horn and gesticulated wildly over the hood of his car to the right at I couldn't know what.

It was the apple tree, and when I told him later that I'd spent all my subsequent years being disappointed in every apple I ate because it didn't taste as good as the apples from that tree, he laughed because that tree had been so old, even when I was young, that the apples had been small, tough and tart, but we ate them together because they were there.

My Dad had been a paratrooper during WW2. He didn't talk about it often, but a couple of times he opened up. Once, he spoke of walking down an avenue in Italy, and passing a house surrounded by a low wall, and seeing an elderly man sitting outside at a little table. A young woman brought him out a bowl of olives, a tumbler of wine and a slab of bread. My father ended up trading a pack of cigarettes for a helmet full of those home made olives. I think that he must have been feeling quite lonely and homesick, because he could have bought olives anywhere, and at less expense than a pack of cigarettes, but the elderly man's look of contentment as he ate of the olives his daughter brought him while he sat in his own garden made them irresistible.

While I lived with my father and stepmother, I got into the habit of driving a couple of hours down to Boston every couple of months or so, to buy food items I couldn't find in Southern Maine...and I'd stop at a little Italian grocery in the North End to pick up olives and bread for my father.

My Dad wasn't a cook, but a grateful eater:0) One of the few things he made at the dinner table was "jelly bread -- just to fill in the spaces."

Like many others who've posted, my dad instilled a sense of integrity, how to graciously compromise in life and how to prioritize. My daughter wrote her college essays this past summer about him!

Thanks for prompting the walks down memory lane, Lindac -- I enjoyed reading everyone's responses!

Cathy in SWPA