Some Habits Just Change Kitchens

My dad loved to cook, and he was very good at it. He had a habit of trying to recreate dishes he liked from restaurants. Zuppa Toscana from Olive Garden was one of his favorites. His version, of course, was infinitely better.

My sister Kami is an equally excellent cook. She once tried to replicate Olive Garden’s Alfredo sauce and accidentally made it a hundred times better. It’s outstanding. Highly recommend. She has the Midas touch when it comes to recipes. Hers are always better than the original. Maybe I’m biased, but still.

Even with all that skill, there were times she needed to call Dad. Usually it was for one small detail. A particular step. A specific brand. Something simple.

Dad’s most famous recipe, at least in our family, was his beef stew. This was not a simple beef stew. It had more than 20 ingredients and nearly as many steps. It was the kind of recipe that took all day and was well worth the wait.

So when one of us made it, we’d inevitably call him.

“Dad, once the potatoes are in, how long do you simmer it at the end?”

There would be a brief pause.

“Well, what you want to do is get a good cut of beef chuck. Sizzle steak works best. Then you’ll want to…”

And just like that, he was off.

He would walk us through the entire recipe. Every ingredient. Every step. Every detail. All the way from the beginning to the end. It did not matter that we had already completed 19 of the 20 steps. Dad believed in a thorough answer.

He did this with everything.

Dad passed away in 2015.

The other night, we were gathered at Kami’s for girls’ night. Mom was there, along with Kami and her friend Kathy. Kami had discovered something called “egg roll in a bowl,” which, according to her, was “to die for.”

We were all looking at the ingredients, trying to figure out the final step. The question was about noodles. Glass noodles? Some specific Asian noodle? Something added at the end.

Kami started answering.

“Well, first you’re going to want to get this sauce from Trader Joe’s, and then you’ll want this brand of…”

Kami had no idea she was doing it, she just kept going, walking us through the entire recipe with the kind of thoroughness that would make a cooking show seem rushed; every step, every ingredient, from beginning to end.

Mom noticed it first. “She’s just like your dad.” Kami stopped mid-sentence and blinked at us. "What? This stuff matters!"

We lost it.

Because of course she is just like Dad. Of course she inherited his need to give you the full manual when you asked for one page. Of course the man who could turn a yes-or-no question into a 20-minute seminar lives on in his daughter who can't help but start every answer at the very beginning.

Dad would have laughed hardest of all. He would've recognized himself immediately and been unreasonably proud of it.

Turns out, people don’t just leave recipes behind. They leave the way they explain them. The way they start at step one, even when you’re already at step nineteen. The way a simple question turns into a full production, because if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it right, by golly!

Kami's got his beef stew recipe… so do I. Turns out, she also got his delivery.

When you grow up with someone like that, discovering you've inherited one of their quirks feels like a small, unexpected gift. Even if that gift shows up in the middle of a girls' night over egg rolls in a bowl, taking over your sister's kitchen monologues.