Dad, I have so many memories of you that are connected to foods. I bought a pork roast at the butcher the other day and brought it home and divided it into pieces, wrapping each piece in its own freezer paper coating. You would have yelled at me for wasting freezer paper and boggled over the fact that I had no masking tape. You’d have approved of my labeling though; pork shoulder, the weight and the date I was putting it in the freezer. You were such a stickler for that.
Right now I can’t bring myself to eat pancakes. You made pancakes for lunch for us so many times when we were children, in the same cast iron skillet with the same griddlecakes recipe. We used it so often that I’d copied it out onto a piece of paper and stuck it to the side of the fridge. And I spelled sugar wrong, with an e. And on the back of that piece of paper was a horrible sharpie bird that I had drawn. My favorite part was when you’d make a giant pancake for yourself with the last of the batter and dub it The Pancake that Ate Chicago. Or New York. Or maybe we called it that and you just humored us.
Today I took sausages from the butcher and squished them out of their casings. They were sweet italian sausages, one of the kinds you seemed to favor when I was a kid, all full of fennel and deliciousness. The feeling of the casing in my hand reminded me of standing next to you at the kitchen-aid, slowly feeding spiced ground pork into the slippery and damp natural casings. As squeamish as I was, natural casings have never bothered me, perhaps because of their distinct lack of blood or gook. Sometimes now we eat at restaurants and I lament the fact that you’ll never get to try them, indeed that you won’t ever spend time with me in Eugene now that I’ve lived here long enough to know where to take you for a great burrito like you wanted.
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