Happy Father's Day to him! (And to all the other daddies out there). His recipes are great :P. Thanks for sharing these tidbits about him.

I love your dad :) nearly all of my memories associated with my dad are food memories--he was that kind of guy--but one of my favorites is on Fridays in elementary school, that was his day to pick me up--and there was always a food treat coming my way that afternoon. Ice cream, roasted peanuts, a slice of cake from the fancy French bakery.

I miss him, but having food associated with him makes it easy to commemorate & honor him.

Happy Father's Day to all!

My food memory about my dad would have to be shucking oysters when I was about 8 or so. My brother and I grew up in a household that was big on seafood and both parents cooked up a storm! My brother was bit pickier than I was, but closer to my father than me, and My father loved oysters and I thought whatever my dad likes I really want to impress him so I better like too! So he taught me to shuck oyster one day, and I got so good at it! I would eat the heck out those puppies with him!
One afternoon my mom and brother caught us out by the pool, oysters in hand, squeezing lemon, sucking and downing iced tea (beer for him) and laughed at the sight of my plate toppled high with shells. good times.

My dad cooks pancakes he calls "thin and greasies" and is always the one to make hollandaise or bearnaise sauce. What he does, he does very well!!

A lovely tribute to your Dad Eilse. He sounds fun and that gym work shows. He looks fit.

Father's Day of my childhood marked the first day of getting the bar-b-que up and running with dad doing his famous chicken. He was not one to be waited on - he was in his element creating what he did best. Cooking for us was his present. Those many years are so fondly remembered.

I raise one to you, Dad, the one who couldn't have done a better job raising me.

CP

In honor of two of the dads in my life: when my husband and I were dating, he was overjoyed at the fact that my dad had more types of mustard in the refrigerator than he did.

Happy Father's Day!

How wonderful that you have so many terrific things to share about your dad. You are very lucky!

My dad, who is 92 years old, rarely cooked except for breakfast. He loved making scrambled eggs with cream chesse, lox and onions. He also thought it was great to mix orange juice with Kool Aid. (I think it was just to get us to drink the OJ.) Today I made him grilled salmon and YOUR Teriyaki Steak.

Happy Father's Day to your Dad! Love the fact that he used to crash weddings. So did Mr. RGBistro in his younger days (he's now 60). Maybe it was a generational thing that younger people don't have the luxury of experiencing.

Growing up, my father had an old beat-up pickup truck with bench seating. From about the age of 7, he'd let me sit in the middle and adjust the stick to put the truck in different gears for him. Anytime we got close to home, he'd also let me steer the wheel, all the way into the driveway.

...Not sure if I'll ever let my kids do that... ;-)

[K]

Thanks to you for sharing some of your dad's food with us on your blog. My dad is now 94 and not cooking much since he broke his hip and lost most of his teeth in the last few years. However, he was a cook in the army at the San Pedro base during WW II. He grew up in a German-American family outside of Dayton, OH where he had different jobs, including working on a pig farm. He did a lot of the cooking in our family and would serve breakfast 3 times a day if permitted. We grew up in Southern California, but there was always a container of bacon grease on the stove, and we learned to eat farm treats like fried oatmeal cakes with syrup. Dad doesn't like cheese or avocados and thinks artichokes are too much trouble, but he's learned to appreciate some Chinese food over the years. To us, his strangest food habits are putting sugar on tomatoes and salt on cantaloupes.

Lovely tribute. I remember my dad grilling steaks when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's. He would just slather them in salt and butter. There was no such thing as too much. To this day I have to stop myself from following in his footsteps. I also remember coming home after spending a college summer in France. I made a seafood dish and ratatouille--both discoveries for me--and was very proud to share them with my family. As we were sitting down, Dad commented as to how he couldn't wait to eat "ratty-poo and dead fish." He managed to choke it down, though. Thirty years later, the phrase is still a family joke.

Tell your Dad to keep up the great work.
We all really appreciate it :)

Happy Fathers Day!

Thanks Elise for sharing. My dad has been gone for 14 years but there isn't a meal in my house that doesn't have his signature on it! He was the best cook in the family. For fathers day we had his famous marinated tri tip on the grill, roasted potatoes, grilled fresh zucinni picked from the garden this morning and a delicious salad. For desert his favorite, and my husband's too...majic cookie bars

I can tell your Dad has been an important part of your culinary upbringing. Mine too. Happy Father's Day to all the food-loving dads out there.

Luckily, we both have great dads.
Our favorite Dad and food memory would have to be our Dad fixing meals for us while our Mom was at work or at an out of town inservice of some sort. Dad always cooked a big plate of scrambled eggs w/ketchup on top, sliced spam or hot dog, sliced dill pickles, all served on a big tray w/saltine crackers on the side. My sister and I thought this was cool because he let us eat in the living room in front of the TV! Nowadays we do the cooking and this morning we were happy to make his favorite breakfast; menudo. Happy Fathers Day to all!

I love this post. Makes me appreciate my Dad all the more.

His cooking specialty: "Dad's famous-amos eggs" which were scrambled eggs + cheese + secret spice (Goya adobo). So simple - - so delicious! the amazing thing is that my Mom could never duplicate it to perfection!

Hi Happy Father's Day,

My first husband lived in Frogsboro, N.C.and he talked like ther Kountry Fella's, I mean't to mispell the words. But I thought yaw might enjoy that thought.

Thanks

Your Dad is, without a doubt, a great man. What a blessing to have such a wonderful Dad. I'm certain you're aware of how fortunate you are - hence the post. Happy Father's Day to your family.

Every minute of every day Ledia. Cheers, ~Elise

Elise, what a great picture of the two of you and what a wonderful tribute to him.

My best memory of my Dad....his chocolate malts - so thick that after trying to suck them through the straw even my little round face had cheekbones.

You are so fortunate that you and your father have a shared interest. I can just imagine the look you share when you both put that fork in your mouth and say uuuummmmmm. Especially when it's something you've made together.

Happy Father's Day!

Your dad sounds like a treasure! I hope he had a wonderful Fathers Day. My favorite culinary memory of my sweet dad, whom I lost in 1988, was his (in)famous fried bologna and mustard sandwich on toast. :) I haven't had one in years, but the memory of that smell in the kitchen will last forever!

Raised by old bark standards, I admire a man worthy of memorable reference and sincere praise, you are a lucky young lady.
My wife of 40 yrs & I have 4 married daughters w/husbands & kids, & a ret. NAVY son w/wife and kids, they all call me Ito(short for ABUELITO, g-father in Spanish). They keep telling me that I am the best father, for one reason or another throughout the year. I do not know if it is my cooking or my behavior, but I try to not disappoint them,.. I don't want them to go to some one else for advice or guidance.
I learned to cook mainly from my father when I was young. My brother & I, drove Dad's trucks in the road construction business in the 50's, which took us away from home for days at a time. Dad always had all the utensils to cook over a fire on the side of the road when morning or evening came upon us.
He could cook just about any Mexican dish, and his favorite was "CARNE GUISADA", w/refried beans, this is a spiced beef tips on brown gravy dish with any sides that you prefer,specially a picante sauce, ..for bread, away from home,it was always corn bread, from scratch.
Our const. boss & some of the crew, ate w/us often, even a state trooper, who stopped to investigate the cooking fire, ate with us several times. We laid his 60 mile patrol route between Freer and Laredo Tx. & he conveniently stopped on his way home to see how we were doing. Dad's cooking always made people's tongues happy.

My dad never cooked until after my mom passed away. She wasn't such a great cook either, but my dad, was a REALLY goood cook. No one knew! Especially my mom. He made the best sauerkraut and sausage that I ever had - the secret was that he let it cook for hours with caraway and barley. Luckily, I wrote some of his recipes down before he passed away. Thanks for sharing the stories about your dad and starting this topic. Cooking and loving go hand-in-hand.

Hi, Elise: What a lovely tribute to your Dad!

My Dad passed away 7 years ago - and I miss him so much! When I was trying to think of food memories of him, I laughed because my Dad was a great guy, but a terrible cook! The few times my Mom had to be out of town when I was a kid, my Dad would make one awful dinner the first night (Spaghettios - mixed with a can of water?!), then give up and we'd eat at Big Boy or Burger King every night until she got back. :-)

But he loved good food - he enjoyed ice cream so much, that it's one of my favorite memories of him. He was brave and would try anything - the only thing I ever saw him balk at were these green pickled sparrows that we were served in Greece (with their heads on!).

He was smart & married an excellent cook - which is what I'm going to recommend to my sons if it turns out they aren't able to cook well for themselves (I'm going to try my best to teach them, however!)

Thanks for all you do and thanks to your Dad, too!

Great article about your dad. Can tell you and your siblings are close with him. Like the way he helps with the house work. Good Man.

That was really sweet :)

Um, can I just say, that he looks fabulous! 80, I think you have to be lying because he looks better than some 60 year olds that I know. The fact that he is working out so much is awesome! I hope I can do that. I want to be spry at 80! I will totally eat donuts with him. Homemade donuts (I used Alton Brown's recipe when I made them last) are out of this world, light and fluffy and sent from heaven.

My Dad didn't cook much (and still doesn't, at 81), but when we were growing up he always made something green to feed us on St. Patrick's day - green eggs, green french toast, green mashed potatoes.

Say, can I borrow your Dad? My Dad was not a cook but he loved to eat. He was from Yoakum, TX and my Mom was from New York so we grew up on plain Southern cooking and fancy Helen Corbett. My Dad's favorite Sunday night supper was grits, link sausage and fried bananas. All the major comfort foods and an amazing combination of flavors. Fix it for your Dad sometime. He'll bless you!
Fay

We love Garrison Keillor!!

Favorite memories of my dad are:

- sailing on the Puget Sound, he would let us take the wheel and steer the boat while he trimmed the sails. One time he made jam and butter sandwiches for all of us - that was actually kind of gross, but the trip was fun.
- camping every summer, taking full advantage of his vast Boy Scouts experience and years in the Forest Service and knowing that our dad was the coolest in the campground. The biggest camping treats were Little Smokies and Dinty Moore stew.
- eating his delicious salt and pepper steaks grilled on the plain old charcoal grill he inherited from his dad.

What a lovely tribute to your dad! Bless him (& you & your fam)! Thanks for sharing :)

I wish I had seen this yesterday, but oh well... My Dad was from Owatonna, MN and lived in California most of his adult life. He LOVED calling his family back there and bragging about the weather! I have lots of great food memories of my dad - his silver dollar pancakes are probably my favorite thing he made, but he was quite an accomplished cook and made all kinds of tasty food. I teared up at the earlier post where someone commented on needing to ask their dad a food question, but not being able to just pick up the phone and give him a call.... I miss mine every single day. Thank you for giving us a glimpse of the great guy your Dad must be ;-)

My father baked me a chocolate cake for my 2nd B-day using a make-shift oven set over coals in a dirt kitchen. We lived 30 miles away from Manila & this was in the late 40's after WWII & we won't have a regular oven for about 10 more years from then. The cake rose so high & he even frosted it & decorated it & had candles on it for me to blow out! Best B-day cake I ever had!

Thank you for reminding me of my sweet father who has passed. Dad always showed up at family functions with a pan of baked beans. The pan would be covered in foil and wrapped with newspapers and ceremoniously taped into a paper sack. We all loved Grandpa's beans.
Shortly before he passed, he hand wrote his recipe for my niece. A copy, that included his detailed instructions," your beans will get a nice tan..." was my Christmas gift the following year. It is treasured and graces the cover of my Cookbook/Binder that holds the copious number of recipes that I print from your blog.

I love it! Your dad is the bomb! My boys will be so impressed with his bench press numbers--they love powerlifting and never miss a workout. Your dad is a great example to follow--best wishes to him!
By the way, we love your blender hollandaise recipe, and now eggs benedict is our Sunday morning tradition.

My father could not boil water without burning it. I saw him fry an egg once and after he retired from farming he did peel potatoes for my mother. If he had any other skills in the kitchen, we never knew of them. I am 88 years old now and don't cook like I used to, but I do enjoy your recipes and make copies of them. I have given away more cookbooks in my life than most people ever have but I still can't resist buying new ones. I guess I plan to be the cook after I get thru the pearly gates.

You are a very lucky women to have such a wonderful Dad, and he is lucky to have you a loving daughter who seems to put family first.

What a lovely father's day tribute to your dad. Thank you for sharing.

I have many wonderful food memories of my dad: the two of us eating toasted sandwiches filled with salame, mortadella, prosciutto and the like outside under the eaves on a rainy day; my dad grilling steaks over a makeshift bbq-a wheelbarrow turned into a grill; and my dad giving me a little sip of his homemade wine along with a bite of salame and a bite of bread.

Miss you dad.

Hi,Happy Father's Day.
I loved "A few facts about my dad"
My dad went to be with the Lord when I was just
6yrs young, but I spent alot of time with him when he wasn't at work. The one memory that came to mind was, dad coming home from work, clearly after having a not so good day & when he saw what was on the table( franks & bean casseroll) his nose flarred & said " I worked all day & come home to this".... & flipped the pan. Shocked, we started cleaning up the mess.
Dad tasting some that got on his fingers regretted his action in more ways then hurting my mother's feelings, because the taste was so good with the green peppers & onions that she seasoned the beans with. It was very funny to me.Mom couldn't just warm food up out of a can. He should have known moms style of cooking but he wasn't thinking at the time.

My father passed in 1989 and I still remember the hot cereal he made when my siblings and i were growing up. He'd get the cereal going-oatmeal; always Buckeye Old Fashioned, or Roman Meal or Cream of Wheat or a mix of oatmeal and Roman Meal, then set the pot in a pan of water to double boil it for at least twenty minutes or it was, "no good." He also made apple sauce from our own apples including the core and peel and then pressed it through a colander. And he made juice from carrots and apples and celery when he got on the health kick. Other than that he didn't like cooking. But, like your father, he swept and mopped and ironed. And he had a teasing sense of humor, was passionate about Middle East history and politics, and learned every job in the woods starting from whistle punk when he was sixteen. He was a faller when I was growing up and told us stories about how he was a chauffeur when he was 12, driving a doctor around until he got caught and throwing rocks at the pretty stained glass windows in the church because he and his friends, "liked the sound." He was also a WWII vet who rarely talked about his experiences. He was one of my best friends and I still miss him. Love and Light

This was wonderful!! The only food memory I have of my dad when I was young (and he is still alive & kickin' @ 85) is when he would occasionally take over the cooking duties from my mom (I have six siblings). My mother is a very wonderful and predictable cook- no surprises, which is good when you're a kid.
One concoction he made was called "Papa Merriman's Special" and I think it contained cream cheese (too weird for midwestern kids in the 1950s) and peas. Because we had a family rule that we sat at the table until we finished eating, several of us sat for a very long time that evening (I think the ones who left sneaked the mixture into a napkin).
To this day, when faced with a dish of unknown origin that is inedible, we call it Papa Merriman's Special.
PS- we, too, ate lots of kielbasa and sauerkraut growing up...

I remember stretches when my Dad would try to cook in the kitchen. Lots of experimenting, and lots of dinners we could barely get down. Then came "Surprise #7" (found on my blog) - it was basically rice and ground meat with some tomato and spices, but it tasted good. We ate it nearly weekly after that. Love your post about your Dad - I hope he had a wonderful Father's Day.

Hey Elise,
Love your site and I always enjoy your family stories. My daddy is 88 and although my mama passed away in 1995 we still tell her stories. She was also from Frogtown but Mississippi not Minnesota how funny is that. My daddy sounds alot like yours, it's a shame that they live so far apart.

Happy Dad's Day to all the Dads out there. I was very blessed to have my Dad with me till he was 96 years old! He now resides in Heaven with my Mom, when she passed he never spent a day without kissing her photo...
Dad loved to eat!! He was my perfect guinea pig, and boy was he honest! He was a wonderful, caring, generous funny soul that loved to be around people and tell jokes. He truly was from the "Greatest Generation". HAPPY FATHERS DAY DADDY, I MISS YOU.

Wow...to think that the person behind all of these recipes was a man from Minnesota!! I am also from Minnesota :D I am proud, haha. I am currently in college right now but I often look at the Simple Recipe web because I like cooking for a hobby. My major isn't in culinary arts but I do like food. Although I do not have a food scene to share with you guys about my dad, I would just like to thank you guys for supporting this website and making this website happen. Thank You!

What a great tribute to your Dad! A Belated Happy Father's Day to him and to your family. Thanks for the great site - your tomatillo scrambled eggs recipe is DELICIOUS!!!

My dad and I used to make chocolate chip cookies together -- I still have that Nestle Toll House recipe memorized, even though I use a different recipe now. At the end of the recipe, he would pour the chocolate chips from high above the bowl and I would catch some and eat them right then - -fun!

My dad would also make breakfast (sounds like a lot of dads do this!) for me and my mom while I was growing up. He still makes breakfast when we have Christmas brunch at his house: eggs, bacon, pancakes (now he has a waffle maker so he makes Belgian waffles!), sausage... nothing fancy's fun to watch him cook! He has a special stance when he cooks bacon -- one hand on hip. I think of him when I catch myself at the stove in this cooking stance as well!

My dad is a good host -- he has had Thanksgiving the past several years and takes pride in making everything nice and planning everything, but he doesn't cook any of the food! Just organizes my family bringing everything.

Thanks for the great idea of sharing dad food memories. I've enjoyed reading yours and the others! I really like the photo you posted. Happy Father's Day!

I'm very impressed that a man from Minnesota is so willing to try new and exciting foods! I'm from Minnesota, as are both of my parents (I'm actually from Garrison Keillor's hometown!), and "exciting" is not a term you'd use for traditional Minnesota cuisine. I think the only things we used to season food in our house were salt and pepper. I remember discovering herbs and cayenne and flavored vinegars when I got to college, and it was like a new world opening!

Does your dad at least still do a good ol' Minnesota hot dish? Remember to include a can of cream of mushroom soup -- also known as "Lutheran binder!"

Thanks for such a great Father's Day post. I enjoy the insites into the behind the scenes of simplyrecipes.

I charish the day that my dad told me that my pork chops and gravy (I learned to cook them from his mother) were his second favorite food next to fried chicken.

As for my husband, he excitedly cooked his own father's day entre, BBQ pork tender loin. It is a different recipe every time. We both enjoy trying new recipes from your site regularly.

Thank you again and keep up the good work.

Happy farther's day to your father Elise and thx to all his delicious recipes and happy father's day to all the dads out there :)

My father died back in 2006 (May god bless his soul) but I still miss him as much as before and still remember the day before he died like it was just yasterday, he had a heart of gold and a strong spirit, strong till the end, everybody loved him and I didn't realize how much I loved him untill he died, so to everyone don't miss any chance to tell your father how much you love him.