Remember

Friends, your pal the Nervous Cook hasn't been feeling much up to cooking lately, and even worse than that, she hasn't felt much like blogging, either. I wish I could blame it on the sudden urge to be outside every waking minute of the day, because the weather is suddenly (and finally) springlike and gorgeous. But that's not it. And I wish I could blame it on simply being too busy to cook, or on having so much fun in the kitchen that we're just diving in and eating all the deliciousness without giving a second thought to recording and detailing the processes. But that's not it, either.

Really, it's just that I've spent much of the last two weeks just kind of... I don't know, staring at an emotional wall, watching emotional paint dry.

The real reason is that since my father passed away two weeks ago Thursday, I just haven't been up to doing much of anything. Cooking, blogging, and talking included.

A young Nervous Cook with her seemingly somewhat surprised father.

My dad and I weren't particularly... close? I don't know, it's hard to really explain. But suffice it to say that his last few years have been very difficult—on him as well as on the rest of our family—and his death, while not especially surprising, still inspired a whole chaos of feelings that are unclassifiable, indescribable, unexpected, and overwhelming.

That said, I'm working through them, and, naturally among the flood of emotions, the food person (that's me) turns to food memories. My dad wasn't a gourmand or anything—we're from New Jersey, for Pete's sake—but he sure did love the stuff, and of course so much of what I think of regarding him swirls around plates and forks and tastes.

Without him, would I love the salty-sweet smell of Taylor Ham as much as I do? Would I have those occasional inexplicable cravings for liverwurst sandwiches, thick with yellow mustard? I might also not have grown so deeply to love coffee, since he was always the one to pour me a mug of my own (heaped with sugar and whitened with milk) to sip over the comics section on Sunday mornings. Or long as I sometimes do for a frozen-rock-hard Skor toffee bar in the middle of the night.

I might or might not, but thanks to him, I do and I will.

So thanks for the food, Dad. Thanks for the liverwurst and the coffee. Thanks for having some part of bringing me into this world. And I'm really sorry that it didn't work out better for you in the end, but maybe one day we can split another jawbreakingly chilled Skor. I sure hope so.