Feeding Andrew: A Love Letter from Father to Son

Writing your first blog is a daunting, nerve-racking kind of business.  First, just the technical hurtles of the blogosphere are enough to stop anyone over 40 and I definitely fall in that category.  Next, the strange nature of my blog, a mixture of slow cooking and single parenting, has kept me at odds over how to introduce this odd pairing.   The “what comes first” paradox of jumping in with a recipe or Andrew’s story has kept me at bay for sometime.  Not to mention photography, design, etc.   Nevertheless, I have decided that, ready or not, I am jumping in feet first…  all eight of them, but more on that in my next post.

You may ask the question of why cooking and parenting?  The truth is that I love both and in my humble opinion, they are inextricably connected.  Primarily, this is about food (slow food, to be exact) and the power it has to transform the mundane into the sublime.

Yet, it wouldn’t exist without Andrew and his crazy need to eat…every day!

The short version of our story started five years ago on March 15^th, 2006, when I brought my former second-grade student, then nine- year-old Andrew, to my house for the first time to be my son.  The longer version started a few years before and can be found at the Andrew’s story tab on the home page.  Up until that day, I had been an avid and passionate cook, but nothing had prepared me for the daily act of cooking for someone who depends on you for their every meal.  Suddenly I was cooking two meals a day during the week and three on the weekend.  No longer a weekend warrior with the occasional inspiration for soulful slow cooking among friends, I was now a fully enlisted recruit in the battle for taking back America from Mc Donald’s and its allies.

Initially, my photos and recipes were being collected for a cookbook that I would give to Andrew when he went to college.  However, after seeing Andrew’s miraculous changes and speaking with hundreds of parents who share the same worries, I decided to move into the 21^st century and house the records of our most memorable meals in cyberspace.  In education, we often beat the blues by saying, “if we help just one child, we have succeeded.”  I give our story up as a public offering, in that same spirit, and hope that a few more families will gather around the table and embark on a culinary adventure that will become a genealogy of memories, traditions and occasionally a transformative, life-changing experience.

I believe with my whole heart that the table has the power to heal many of this world’s maladies and that the act of sitting together, in communion, night after night, sharing food and conversation is the most potent recipe for our children’s well being and their present and future happiness.   Andrew is living proof that there is healing power in the table.  The table will teach you and your family to stay and linger, to savor and smell, and to learn of the subtleties and beauty of human interaction.  I invite you to jump in, trust the process, and start your own journey to the heart and soul of a truly humanizing experience.