Everything Has a Recipe

Years ago, while on vacation with my family, I convinced my dad to help me bake a desert. My dad, who at the time didn't have the best working hearing aides, agreed to help but was very dismayed when he found out I needed him to knead some dough.

"You want me to do needling?" he said.

To which I eventually said yes, and from then on, kneading was known as needling.

This year, while on vacation, I asked for his aide again, and he heartily agreed. Again, his task was needling the pie dough. I set it up for him and my cousin, who was sitting at the table with her headphones on, talking in a Zoom meeting, said, "Yes."

To which my dad asked, "What?"

My cousin took her headphones off and said she was in a meeting. I put the bowl of dough ingredients in front of my dad.

"A meeting? Now? On your computer? How long have you been in the meeting?"

She'd been working all day.

"Make it look like cottage cheese." I nudged the bowl at him.

"What does that even mean? Do you see these big chunks of butter? They are cold and hard. Let's put them in the microwave."

"No dad. They are supposed to be cold."

He looked at me like I'd told him we were no longer on Earth.

"It's part of the recipe."

He squinted at me then looked at my cousin, who sat watching us impassively.

"You remember when you made those mashed potatoes last year?" He said to my cousin.

She confirmed she did.

"Well that was crazy," he said. He then began to needle the dough. "This doesn't feel right."

"It's fine," I said.

"Why was it crazy?" My cousin asked.

"Because you did it with no recipe. Everything in life has a recipe. How do you think we got to the moon? We had a recipe."

"Do you mean a checklist?" I asked.

"I was making mashed potatoes, not going to the moon," my cousin said.

"Oh darn it! I forgot to take off my ring! Look at this, there is all this stuff, what is this? Butter? Under my ring." My dad held up his hands. "How much butter is in this? This much butter doesn't seem healthy."

"The butter isn't the concerning part," I said.

He looked at me like I'd slapped him.

"What is?"

"The shortening."

"The what?"

"Shortening," my cousin said, apparently no longer participating in the Zoom call.

"What's shortening?"

"I don't actually know," I said. "But it's bad for you, and it's in the recipe."

My dad, again with a squinty eye, considered what I said then went back to needling the dough. "See? Everything has a recipe."

"It's blueberry pie," I said. "Maybe the antioxidants in the blueberries cancel out the shortening."

"I don't think that's how that works," my dad said.

"It's vacation, the rules are different."

The pie turned out great. The next morning, my mom, the woman who forbade my brother and I to eat any form of sugary breakfast our entire childhood, sidled up to me.

"Your aunt and I had pie for breakfast. It had blueberries in it, it was basically fruit."

And it turned out that the rules on vacation were in fact different, but not because the shortening was canceled out.