Happy Father’s Day, from One Potato! 🥔 🎁
A special guest post by Dr. Jonathan Sugar - A Father’s Day tribute to cooking and family traditions
At One Potato, we are deeply committed to celebrating the rich tapestry of our diverse community. We recognize that every family brings unique traditions, flavors, and stories to the table, and it's these differences that make our culinary experiences so vibrant and enriching. As part of our ongoing mission to inspire healthy eating and foster family togetherness, and as part of our pivot to an online community and newsletter, we are excited to be able to share profiles, interviews, and stories from these diverse voices.
This Father’s Day, we kick off our new series with a heartfelt reflection from Dr. Jonathan Sugar, a dedicated father, lifelong baker, and child and adolescent psychiatrist, sharing his cherished memories of cooking with his family. Join us in celebrating the fathers who bring joy and flavor to our kitchens.
We would love to have you contribute your family stories as well and foster building this community - please send us a DM if you’re interested in sharing.
Wishing Dr. Sugar, and all the father’s out there, a Happy Father’s Day!
Father's Day in the Kitchen
by Dr. Jonathan Sugar
Father's Day is here, and I remember when my (now grown) daughters and I shared food, cooking, and eating. Joy attends most of these memories, and appreciation for how I learned from them about being a kid, a teen, and a young adult, and they learned from me - about baking challah, biscuits, and pie; about eggs - poached, fried, omelets and souffles; about different ways to cook fish and fowl (how we'll never forget the lingering odor of arctic char cooked in a skillet with a salt base, and smoking up the kitchen until the smoke detectors blared!) We all learned from Mom about healthy eating with lots of vegetables and fruit and sharing food with others. We reveled in our reputation among the kids' friends as being the house where we ate "weird stuff," like greens from the CSA farm, fiddlehead ferns, and beans and grains.
My first memories of learning to cook came not from my mother but from a woman our family deeply loved and respected, who cared for us regularly in the afternoons. "Z" taught me how to pan-fry steak when I was about 7, not being afraid of the stove but being careful and cleaning up. We were a meat-and-potatoes kind of family when I was growing up - but the kitchen became a place where I felt comfortable doing things and learning things, and as my own kids were growing up, we all knew it was a place I enjoyed.
Enchiladas were a specialty. Flour tortillas, shredded jack and cheddar cheese, and a homemade sauce with tomatoes, onion, garlic, canned jalapeno, and some canola oil. Shredding the cheese, cooking, and mixing the tomatoes, garlic, and onions. Then, the assembly line: dipping a tortilla in the warm sauce, laying it out on a plate, filling it with shredded cheese, often some beans, canned sliced olives, and finally rolling this stuffed delectable and placing it in the baking dish. And repeating this as many times as servings we needed. Then, into the oven at 350 for 30 minutes and cleaning up. Aah, the lessons here! Learning about what is known as "mise en place" - everything in place before starting to cook. Chopping onions and garlic, slicing olives, shredding cheese, and combining them all. It was good to be with my kids doing this - and knowing they were soaking it in and helping out.
Pi day (March 14) and making a pie from scratch with them, weekends with morning time - poaching eggs, making omelets. Special breakfasts on birthdays. 1-2-3 biscuits. Easy for kids - 1 cup dairy (almost anything - milk, buttermilk, cream), 2 cups flour (white, whole wheat, whatever!), and 3 tsp baking powder. That's it! Cut in some solid fat if you like, add berries, and make it rich for shortcake, lean, quick, and straightforward for breakfast or dinner.
Sauteed sliced bananas, topped with some syrup, and, for special occasions, flambéed with warm orange juice or (cheap) cognac or rum and brought to the table. A young child can learn knife skills slicing the banana, know what fun it is to add the butter to the pan and watch it melt - hear and see and smell how the banana cooks, caa and changes as it sautées.
In my work as a child psychiatrist and as someone who likes seeing how families work, it has been impressive to see how fathers and their children can bond over time spent together. Cooking offers time and an activity that can engage everybody. Men can cook, clean, do laundry, and all else, providing time for kids to see how everybody has a role in supporting the family and enjoying each other relaxedly at home.
It offers a way for stressed parents to discuss what works for engaging the kids, discuss how they share responsibilities day by day, and practice working through differences. What's for breakfast today? How are each of the kids eating? How can we engage our teenagers even as they strive to spend more time with their friends and develop their own social lives?
As the kids have grown and left home - they carry recipes - challah, poached eggs, pie crust, and fish. They call - "How did you cook char?" "What's your recipe for braided challah?" "How do you clean cast iron?" Every question is an opportunity to learn, laugh (remembering the cake that didn't rise, the eggs that splayed when poached, and the arctic char that set off the smoke alarms as it cooked on a bed of salt over high heat) and share.