Memories of my dad, who would've been 89 today. In list form.
Some food Dad liked, from high to low and in between, in no order:
- Caviar
- Mallomars
- Whitefish
- Mama liga with pot cheese, sprinkling of caviar
- Helzel
- 2 buttered rolls
- Borscht, cold, with sour cream
- Frozen cheese blintzes, again with the sour cream
- Halvah
- ½ a grapefruit, eaten aggressively with a spoon, juice flying, a person could go blind!
- Smoked Nova Scotia salmon (not lox)
- Jarslberg cheese on a Carr’s water cracker
- Hot peppers
- Pickles
- Franks-in-blanks
- Enough free samples at Dean & Deluca to make a lunch
- Cantaloupe
- Fig Newtons
- The leftover escargot garlic butter cadged from me with dunking bread – at the old Brasserie
- Egg creams (no eggs, no cream)
- Raw egg – tap a little hole in one end, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, and suck that sucker out. Served as a great parlor trick performed at our kitchen in the morning after a sleepover, disgusting and thrilling my little friends. Don’t try this at home in the age of rampant salmonella.
- Instant coffee prepared thusly: heaping spoon of coffee “crystals,” heaping spoon of sugar, AND heaping spoon of honey, served in a small yellow-taxi-themed mug (tire for a handle) Tony gave him
- Breakfast at the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton
- Pretty much anything my Aunt Clarice made and brought from Brooklyn
Some things Dad thought were fun, from high to low and in between, in no order
- Reading T.S. Eliot
- Going grocery shopping at the A&P or Gristedes in East Hampton
- Schnorring (funny Yiddish word for begging) lunch at Dean & Deluca, see above
- Playing pinochle
- Starting a company with $1500 he won in a pinochle game
- Breaking tunelessly into song, at top volume
- Humiliating his offspring by doing things like inexplicably yelling “Bop!” in a supermarket (again with the supermarkets!)
- Visiting me in college and dining at our on-campus greasy spoon, The Pub
- The Tonight Show
- Seinfeld
- Thelonius Monk
- Chet Baker
- Al Jolson
- Cole Porter
- Rodgers and Hart and/or Hammerstein
- Bach, iconic performances by Wanda Landowska on harpsichord
- The NY Times crossword puzzle
- William Safire’s column
- Illegally driving on to the beach in East Hampton in a dune buggy -- then getting stuck in the water, having to be pulled out by some large yellow machinery – not sure if that part counted as fun
- Dancing to the rock-n-roll music
- My childhood art work
- Speaking in Yiddish with Norman Podhoretz at fancy parties
- Xmas tree shopping at Hren's Nursery and joking around with JP Fecteau
- Going "macho frio" -- his made up term for not wearing a coat, but layering, layering, layering, plus "muffler" (tx Tort)
- His family
Some things Dad disapproved of
- Being bored
Good news! No cats!
ReplyDeleteThat's a really nice picture of him. I'm way on board with the Mallomars and halvah; the raw eggs, not so much. I remember the one time I met him thinking that he looked like Sherlock Holmes; he had a flair. He might have actually been wearing a cape, but even if he wasn't, he looked like a guy who would and could.
ReplyDeleteThis is lovely. I'm right with him on the Halvah. I've got 2 dads (bio, step) and I don't think I could create such comprehensive lists for either of them. Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOh, Kate! This is soooo sweet and funny and beautiful. I think you've created a new genre. I really want to know more about "macho frio" tho... is there a typical number of layers? would a vest count?
ReplyDeletePune -- yes, a vest, be it sweater or suede is an appropriate macho frio layer. For example: turtleneck, button-down shirt, vest (or sweater), tweed jacket, heavy muffler (not a "scarf" don't ask me why!), probably then some suede gloves and some kind of tweed hat.
ReplyDeleteOh, and btw, don't fold your arms! Embrace the cold! Good luck!