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

rhythm and ritual plays an instrumental part in the running of a family. It is also interesting to compare the scenarios from each book to my life to see the effect that my parents had one me as I grew up.
In M.F.K. Fisher’s book, The Gastronomical Me, her father’s role in the family is reviewed. The father must spend time with his two daughters and the very thought of this frightens him as Fisher says, “he actually shook as he drove away from the ranch, with us like two suddenly strange monsters on the hot seat beside him (Fisher 4).” Things ease up and they begin to appreciate their father more as they spend more alone time with him. In Douglas Bauer’s book, What Was Served, the father’s role is also looked at in comparison to other members of the family. In their family there is rhythm and ritual because each person has their own role, which keeps everyone occupied. As the father and grandfather work all day in the fields, the mother prepared supper for them. Bauer believes that his mother’s work “was the harder and more manual (Bauer 10)” of the two parents.
After reading the two excerpts from each author’s book, the father’s role in The Gastronomical Me is the one that resonates with me and my relationship with my own father the most. My father worked as a professional chef up until he had children, as he saw it was too time consuming. The time I spent with my father in the kitchen was when I learned the most about his life. He would always talk about how a professional kitchen was a hectic environment but it was one he was able to find comfort in. My father had a certain dominant presence in the kitchen that stayed consistent throughout my life. One of my favorite things that my Dad taught me how to cook was biscuits and gravy. This particular meal was a real comfort food for him. It also wasn’t especially difficult to cook.
Biscuits and gravy is a meal that requires a lot of patience. You must wait for the pan to get to the right temperature and make sure all of the meat is correctly seasoned and fully cooked. If you don’t take the time to complete all of what is necessary for the meal, whoever is eating will notice. Two of the lessons learned in cooking biscuits and gravy correlated to life lessons my father wanted me to know. Patience was one of the first things he taught me from a young age. If you try to finish something too quickly and don’t wait for all everything to finish, you will mess up the final product. The second lesson learned from this meal is to put one hundred percent of your effort into everything you do. Whether it be seasoning the meat correctly or finishing your task at work, people will take note if you try your hardest.
The hard working American culture and the French food culture played a more instrumental part in my upbringing than Jewish culture.

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

cooking.
The rhythm and ritual found in Douglas Bauer’s book can also be found in my family. My mother and father are very hard workers. They would work all day and come home, which is when my dad would start preparing dinner. As my father asserted his dominance in the kitchen with taking care of all that went into the meal, the rest of my family was very hands off for dinnertime. It wasn’t until my parents separated a couple years ago that I saw the true effects of the rhythm and ritual. My mother never really learned how to cook because she never felt the need to. She always provided for her family in different ways. While my father was cooking, she was getting my sister and me to our various sports practices and after the meal was over she would be the one to clean up. She’s a hard working woman who spends a lot of her time trying to make sure her children can have the best lives possible. After the divorce, as I mostly lived with my mother, it was difficult for her to find something to cook for me every night. She wasn’t used to having to do a task that was so irregular for her. That is when I learned to truly appreciate pasta with homemade sauce over Kraft mac and cheese. On the other hand, when I spent time with my father, it was mostly fun and sometimes the homework I had for that night was ignored. If my stomach was full of food that night, my math textbook was not full of answers.
After analyzing the rhythm and ritual in my family, I think of the popular saying, “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” When my parents were together everything in the household ran like a well-oiled machine. After their divorce, things did not go as smoothly. What came out of this, though, was my own independence. I chose to get my work done to be successful and it wasn’t until I started living with my mother more that I truly began to love cooking. I wanted to eat something better than Kraft mac and cheese. Now that I am on my own, this whole rhythm and ritual has come full circle. I make myself get into a certain rhythm because I know with balancing school, work, and life, that’s how everything will get done. That lesson is something that my parents have taught me. My mother has taught me her hard work ethic from a world outside of cooking. I have also learned, from my father, that if I’m patient and put a great deal of effort into what I’m doing, I will only get positive results.