201 The Midwestern Mom and The Coming of Age Breakfast

The Storied Recipe

The episode explores the profound emotional connection between food, memory, and community through a conversation about childhood kitchens. Guest

Key takeaways

Erik Fabian's mother used cooking to teach self-sufficiency and 'the literacy of food.'
Food serves as a fundamental 'love language' and a primary way to express care in families.

Main topics

Childhood food memories
Sourdough baking techniques

Notable quotes

If you can read, you can cook.

Conclusion

The episode demonstrates that food is much more than sustenance; it is

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:03) Hello, I'm Becky Hadid, host of The Storied Recipe. As my weekly guests share their stories through the vessel of cherished food memories, we all become better cooks, more grateful for the gift of food, and we honor those that have loved us through their cooking. Speaker 1 (0:19) Today, I'd like to invite you to step back into the kitchen of your childhood. Can you remember it? What color were the cabinets? Was there linoleum on the floors and laminate on the counters? Or tile and granite or something else? Was it warm or cold? Cluttered or clean? Was it a happy place? Now put yourself back into that kitchen. Look at little you. Can you recall the first dish that you made? How about the feeling that you had, that pride you felt in feeding yourself, the confidence that came from doing something so grown up, or the joy of sharing your cooking with someone else? I think about my own first memories and my mom is there with me. Very likely, it's the same with you. And certainly it is the same with today's guest, Eric. Eric's mom is by his own description, a curious, caring, deeply intelligent woman who poured a remarkable amount of herself into her home and children. She was a nurse and a cook of Midwestern classics, chili, spaghetti, chicken soup, just an American mom. But of course, there's no just about it, is there? Whether it's Eric's mom, your mom, or mine, it's not an ordinary thing to have a parent who hands you an egg and says, you can do this. When Eric's mom taught him to make an egg in a hole, just a simple piece of grocery store bread, a hole cut out at the middle, an egg cracked right into that hole, she opened a door to competence, satisfaction, and a lifetime of feeding himself and others. Speaker 2 (2:07) Today, Speaker 1 (2:08) that egg in a hole has grown up a little. Now it's eggs sunny side up, avocado and microgreens layered on top of a thick slice of sourdough made with help of tools from Eric's own company, Sour House. But whether we make our first dishes the same now as we made way back then, today's episode is a wonderful time to remember. It's a time to remember and appreciate that what's wholesome and universal, like bread, eggs, and moms, are gifts that are no less precious because they are common. Speaker 3 (2:43) So I remember being young, probably like eight. And at that time in my life, my mom had been through a divorce. And so it was like my sister, my younger sister and I and her townhouse in a small town in Virginia. And we're a food family and we like to eat. Everybody pretty much likes to cook. And so it was like, I was always around my mom cooking and stuff. But I think when I started to kind of like make my own things, like making an egg was like the first thing. And, and my mom, I just remember saying, uh, everybody can make an egg. And it's like, once you can make an egg, you can feed yourself. And, uh, and I just been looking back now in the, in the context of like, you know, a single parent, you know, as a parent now, I, uh, I could see the, like, the benefit of like educating your kids on how to feed themselves and how that could be helpful. But it wasn't really in that context that it was just like, you know, here's food, here's how to, here's how to make it, you know, here's how to have fun with it. I Speaker 2 (3:50) can relate to that in a way. I remember my mom saying something and looking back, it doesn't seem like that powerful of a thing, but I found it to be very empowering. She always said, if you can read, you can cook. To me, it was such an empowering thing to know. There wasn't some secret alchemy here. There wasn't some, even some secret talent. If you wanted to do it, if you liked it, if you could read, you could learn how to do it. Speaker 3 (4:15) Totally, totally, totally. And yeah, and it's a great motivator. And I remember my mom getting me like one of those kiddie cookbooks, you know, and that could have been where this my first egg recipes were coming from, honestly. And, you know, it's like a little spiral bound, you know, kind of like water resistant cover kind of things. I actually still have one of those somewhere on my bookshelf now. Yeah, I feel like it's all cooking is this human endeavor. We all do it and we all. should know how to do it. And it's, and I think it's a part of growing up, like, like reading and just the basic literacy of food, I feel like is something that while it kind of gets passed down more family to family, I think typically it's Speaker 2 (4:56) as Speaker 3 (4:56) important as reading. Speaker 2 (4:59) Absolutely. One of the very first things you said was that, you know, your mom was recently divorced. Do you feel like there was a sense that either teaching to cook or learning to cook was part of like a path towards reestablishing a home? I guess if a home had been broken, sort of putting it back together, was there that aspect to it? Speaker 3 (5:18) It's an interesting question. Speaker 2 (5:20) I don't, I can't connect the dots on Speaker 3 (5:22) the timeline so specifically that, but the, I do think that there's a sense of like, food is just a way that we related and it's just like kind of the one of the three lines of my family cooking be in the kitchen and my mom she's like a midwestern lady you know and like so she's like cooks all the classics you know like chili and spaghetti with meatballs and you know uh chicken soup and like that kind of stuff she um was always like cranking that out and and i think that being, you know, be in the kitchen around Christmas and the holidays and, you know, making cookies together or cake or whatever, that kind of stuff is all just like constant presence. And so I think it was just like, I felt at least at the time as a kid, I was just like more of a natural output of like being around the kitchen, being curious about it. you know, she would talk about when she learned to cook, she just like hung alongside her mom in the kitchen. And, and that's kind of how it got passed along. And so I think she probably encouraged me to just be in the kitchen with her. And then I like to eat. And so I like to, you know, like being able to make something and eat it, you know, it was fun. Speaker 2 (6:32) It's the biggest motivator of all, I think for all of us who love to cook, you said early, and then you, you referenced it again here, you said that you're a food family. And then you said here food has a through line in your family. You mean greater than your nuclear family. Tell me more about that. So I Speaker 3 (6:49) come from sort of like Welsh, German, Italian, Hungarian, Slavic kind of ancestry. And both sides of my family are like, you know, a couple generations into the country. But like my mom's parents kind of generation, there's this clear divide of like she had a Welsh. mother and or like a descendant and welsh american kind of descendant mother it was like a generation or so in and then uh a german american father was a generation or so in and so those like ethnic kind of food cultures were still present um there was uh and from my mom telling her my grandmother who died before i was born uh was a very good cook very good entertainer and so um there was a lot of uh, kind of very nice meals made in the home. And, you know, back in the, you know, we're talking the fifties kind of thing, like the, you know, more formal meals and stuff, but it was like always, uh, very important. And they developed like a sense of taste and like, you know, my grandfather liked wine and like, you know, and then they would, you know, make things like German Spetzleys. And, you know, so there was like these kind of like ethnic. through lines that were still there that were carried in food. And I would say in my family, more so than like religious practices or, you know, really particular holidays or ceremonies or anything like that, the threads of that that still kind of continue in my family are through the food culture, you know, and then my dad liked to eat and like he came from a kind of different kind of kind of zone. So my mom would cook to kind of his taste some degree and And then, you know, my sister as well, she's a baker and like kind of in the sweets. She loves to make cakes and muffin, you know, cupcakes and cookies and all that kind of stuff. She's become really sophisticated at that. So it's like everybody has got their like own little niche in my family. And food is just something we all enjoy and talk about and just dissect and like to go out to eat and all that kind of stuff. Speaker 2 (8:57) Eating is an occasion. Speaker 3 (9:00) It's not even an occasion like that's how I think about it. It's like when we get together, we definitely make meals or we go out to eat. And it's like that is part of the occasion for sure. It's like a default action. But it's also just it's like one of the foundations of our life and our way of being together. Like when we have nothing else to talk to or arguing or whatever, we can still probably talk about food. Speaker 2 (9:21) And argue over it. Speaker 3 (9:23) Yes, I agree. But like it's less it's less dividing, I suppose, than other things. Speaker 2 (9:29) So it's not so much that your mom made this for you. It's that your mom sort of, it's like she gave you the keys to the kingdom when she Speaker 3 (9:36) showed you how to make Speaker 2 (9:38) this. Speaker 3 (9:38) Yeah, Speaker 2 (9:38) and Speaker 3 (9:38) I'm sure she made me many eggs. And I feel like it's kind of appropriate. It's like when I read about foods around the world and stuff, how the chicken is one of those animals that's able to live in so many. parts of the world's meat ecosystems and it's really kind of followed humans around and uh so it it makes sense that's the kind of food that you know you might start with and uh when i was young it was like breakfast was like something that uh would get built out quite a bit especially on weekends so i've eaten many eggs i'm sure by that point uh but yeah my my my memory of it is really in a small townhouse kitchen in the 80s and do it myself. And it's funny because like I have a couple of kids now and my son has gone through that. And like he had a moment where he made his first egg and then put it on some toast and ate it and was very proud. And like it was just recognize that like cycle. Speaker 2 (10:38) Yeah. Yeah. It's your coming of age egg. Well, let's dive into your mom's story a little bit more because like I said, she's the one who kind of gave you the keys to the kingdom who handed this recipe to you. She set you on your way towards where you are now. You're about to say something. Go for it. Speaker 3 (10:56) No, no. I was just thinking about my mom's food, just like her as a cook and stuff. And my mom is like, you know, she's like, I guess, a super taster. Speaker 2 (11:07) She's Speaker 3 (11:08) got a much more sophisticated palate than I do. And she's able to pick apart tastes much better than I am. And so she really enjoys food, comes from this kind of... you know, traditional food. She likes making food for family, being that provider in that way, but she really is able to elevate food, you know, and even in the context of that kind of like Betty Crocker kind of like Midwestern kind of milieu, she's able to take some of those basic things and do them well. I don't know that I got that, you know, she, she has some talents that I think are beyond me, but definitely that her just kind of like persistent curiosity and interest in it and something that passed on. Speaker 2 (11:48) persistent curiosity. Man, that would be almost one of the best compliments someone could give me. It would be to describe me that way. Is that something that just describes her overall, her personality? Yeah. Speaker 3 (11:58) I mean, my mom is a very intelligent woman who I think put a lot of that brain capacity into the home. And she was professionally a nurse. And she's just like one of the people who's a caretaker, cares people. So I think food is a way of... expressing care and taking care of folks. You know, you're sick, you get chicken soup. You know, when we arrive, she always wants to have food around, even if we're like, you know, don't make food. She always makes too much food now, like even for things. But, and I would say that, yeah, she has just a lot of curiosity, just a lot of stimulation around it. You know, her home was full of lots of cookbooks, which probably inspired me having a lot of cookbooks, much to my wife's chagrin. And I even now have a cookbook. podcasts I do but you know she had all those like grandma church cookbooks around that way you know you collected this back in 80s and 60s and stuff and uh yeah she had that and also a lot of stuff a lot of like gadgets and appliance and this is maybe something of her generation but she just wanted to try everything, you know, she wanted a new fangled. So just like everything about cooking and everything around it, she is, it just filled up a large part of her, of her life. Yeah. Okay. Speaker 2 (13:12) What would you say, if those are sort of some of the traits that defined her and her cooking, her approach to food, what would you say are some of the events that defined her maybe as a cook or maybe just even as a person, the mother that you experienced? Speaker 3 (13:27) I would share that growing up, in ohio in you know in a kind of a midwestern context with a pretty traditional family was informative how she thinks about family and coming around coming gathering around food and like the role of you know women in the home and kind of providing for a family that kind of thing my grandmother her mother died uh when she was when my mom was relatively young so uh i think there was also uh kind of a sense of absence in her life of having lost that kind of important figure. And then I think, you know, in terms of our household, like I mentioned, she was, you know, a divorced mom when I was like young and like, you know, in like around seven or eight and, you know, working as a nurse and then also caring for two little kids. In the context of the 80s and the food culture of the 80s, you know, the kind of like combination of things I would kind of like pull out that kind of like define how she approached cooking. Speaker 2 (14:23) And, you know, I think that for Speaker 3 (14:25) those of you who are listening who aren't as old as me, like the I think the, you know, the 80s was that funny time of transition from kind of I would call a certain kind of ignorance in food. Like it was like, you know, European food was still quite cherished. People like Julia Child were, you know, popularizing access to that and kind of making it a little bit more accessible. you just started to see on PBS, like cooking shows bringing a little bit more like ethnic diversity over, um, young Speaker 2 (14:58) can cook. Yeah. Did you watch that on PBS? Oh Speaker 3 (15:01) yeah. Yeah. And can cook. He, you know, and now notorious Jeff Smith, you know, we're, uh, we're my two guys at the time. And, uh, But I think that that was it, you know, it was just like, you're seeing like food culture kind of from this like high, low, very European influenced kind of thing with a much more limited kind of ingredient set. You know, sushi was this thing that was in movies, you know, it was like those, like the bounty of multi-ethnic kind of foods that we now enjoy.