The Critic

Grandpa Paul. Strong as an ox at 82, patriarch, chef, master gardener and giant redwood of the family. His Sunday dinners are legendary and anyone who has the good fortune to stop by does not leave hungry. Sunday dinners, think Italian style, are promptly at 1:00 every week. By 1:10 the enormous platters are empty.

Technically, Grandpa is my husband's maternal grandfather but his presence in my life blurs the distinction and he is, for all intents and purposes, my Grandfather too.

Today he is sampling my pumpkin soup. We are sitting in the usual spot at the kitchen table. He eats a spoonful and matterof- factly states, "I wouldn't change a thing."

I am at once both humbled and proud. Grandpa appreciates food and this is no faint praise. I would later learn that no matter how I tampered with various ingredients on any number of dishes, Grandpa's response, "I wouldn't change a thing," was something I could count on. My journey to perfect pumpkin soup, was years in the making. Yet looking back, I can identify several pivotal events that drove me from the table to the kitchen or in the first instance, from the backyard.

At 26 years old, I was newly married and newly mortgaged. As many fixer-upper couples do, we planned and plotted the changes we would make, only to find our backyard fantasies were radically different. Where my husband, John, saw tomatoes, basil and lemon cucumbers, I saw dahlias, roses and lisianthus.

Compromises were made, sun and soil were fairly divided and things hummed along peacefully. While I filled vases with cut flowers and made plans for future bare root acquisitions, John picked up tomato growing tips from Croatian farmers, carefully weighing the pros and cons of drip systems.

We are together in the yard on a hot day in August, and pick the first Brandywine tomatoes. It is a momentous occasion and we maneuver impatiently in the kitchen, alternately seasoning and slicing. Within minutes the tomatoes, still warm from the sun, are bathing in olive oil and vinegar. I take the first bite and I am hopelessly in love! These plants are beautiful, even the leaves smell delicious! I suddenly see the wisdom in cultivating these ruby treasures so close to the kitchen.

Suffice it to say, the following summer our landscape changed. The discovery of heirloom tomatoes sealed the fate of my flower beds that required full sun. Furthermore, the addition of basil to the backyard was my official introduction to homemade pesto, a relationship that turned out to be more steadfast than my love of snapdragons.

It went on this way for several seasons, summer love really, nothing more, in terms of culinary development. We worked, we ate, we added two daughters to the mix. My first attempt at truly incorporating cooking into our lives was more damage control than anything else.

Seven years after our first harvest, I am 33 and my oldest daughter is three. I am sitting in her bedroom, on the floor in her Fisher Price kitchen, and she asks if I would like dinner.

"Oh yes!" I reply.

She picks up her Fisher Price phone, turns to me and says, "What would you like?" I am momentarily confused by the phone but play along, "Hmmm, how about pasta?"

She then, very clearly, says into the phone, "I'd like to place an order to go."

I am mortified. The fact that I am mortified by this action surprises me. Cooking is just a means to an end. Does it really matter how the food gets to the table? We have an official binder of take out menus from all of our favorite restaurants. Some of the numbers are programmed into our cell phones. Well prepared dinners are, quite literally, only a phone call away.

Yet sitting there on the floor, memories of my own childhood experiences with food are projected like an 8mm home movie. There's my sister and I with Mom and Dad sitting down for dinner. There we are making bread on Sunday afternoons. There's my Mom making crepes, cookies, casseroles and every muffin under the sun. It matters.

The very next day I don an apron, dust off a cookbook and make certain my daughter sees "Mommy making cookies." From this day forward, I tackle cooking like an olympic sport. Classes, books and the discovery of cooking shows build my enthusiasm for time in the kitchen. A tip or trick here and there and it is as though I possess the secret to life itself. I embrace every food challenge and look for more. Kitchen gadgets appear on my wish lists and Cook's Illustrated becomes my "fun reading."

It was about this time that the pumpkin soup made its first appearance at Grandpa's house, my parents' house and my sister's at Thanksgiving.

There were key moments, to be sure, but there was also a gradual change and somewhere in the years between spaghetti and coq au vin, I started to enjoy the process. My zeal turned into zen and cooking became a way to connect versus something to be conquered. When Sunday dinners became too much for Grandma and Grandpa, my mother-in-law took over the tradition and Monday night dinners replaced the Sunday gatherings.

Although Grandma and Grandpa are now gone, some things have remained the same. Monday night dinner is served promptly at 6:00, anyone is welcome and by 6:10 the large platters are empty.

However, stick around and at approximately 6:15 every week, my youngest daughter, now almost twelve, brings out a dessert that she herself has prepared. This weekly responsibility was bestowed upon her by my mother-in-law, who had an astute recognition of my daughter's passion for cooking and the family's passion for eating desserts.

With the help of her cousins, dessert is served and amid the chaos of laughter, questions, comments and forkfuls of food the phrase invariably escapes: "I wouldn't change a thing."