Appetites for Adventure Began in Childhood

In 1994 we drove a rented Penske moving truck and our weepy 5-week-old firstborn into Michiana. Hollow-stomached from long highway miles, we eased into the nearest Martin’s parking lot so my spouse, Ken, could dash in for some deli take-out before we faced unloading the truck at our new South Bend home.

I’m an adventurous eater, but with a colicky baby I was avoiding spices that might worsen her wailing. Ken returned, deli boxes in hand, shaking his head, saying, “I asked the woman behind the counter if she would point out some deli salads without a lot of spices, and she said, ‘Oh, no, sir, we almost never put spices in anything we make!’” So we glumly shoveled in spoonsful of mostly mayonnaise.

How times have changed.

The Martin’s deli cases that once featured technicolor Jell-O salads now offer sushi and paninis. And that squalling babe and the sister who followed, now both in their 20s, lead the family in adventurous cooking and eating. What happened in between?

For one, we never stopped dreaming of deliciousness. Colleagues who relocated here from big cities in the 1990s started a monthly potluck where we all cooked a particular cuisine theme (such as Moroccan, Venezuelan, Thai), so we could enjoy spicy food (Take that, long-ago Martin’s!) and hone our culinary skills as we waited for the local restaurant scene to improve.

Has it ever.

At our house when the kids were small, we skipped jarred baby food and used a little tableside mill that pushed tablespoons of whatever was for adult dinner through fine holes at the turn of a crank. So, from the start the kids learned to enjoy variety. Curried dal with rice? Black beans with Caribbean seasoning? They grabbed for the spoon.

In early grade school, the kids, holding hands and a few dollar bills, took their first non-supervised walks to Bamber’s Superette a few blocks from our house. I nervously waited on the front stoop until they returned, triumphant, with jingling change and kid-sized bottles of Orangina, enchanting as genies’ lamps.

As a nearly lifelong vegetarian, I taught the kids to cook from generations of Moosewood cookbooks that established butternut bisque and corn and potato chowder as the nostalgic taste of their childhood. During their high school years, our kids produced mix CDs labeled in Sharpie “Kitchen Music” (queue up Neutral Milk Hotel, Magnetic Fields and Panic at the Disco!). Much of our parenting in those years—such a surprising, uncertain and often hilarious time—involved staying out of the way so the teens and their friends could gather in the kitchen, cooking, singing and dancing their way to one-dish innovations eaten out of a single pot with many spoons.

Apron strings snipped, our eldest boosted her skills in a vegan restaurant kitchen in Bloomington (where she met her now-husband, who brings his own kitchen acumen). She returned home with newfound wisdom: Curries are better boosted with a little sugar and lots of lime. Tofu is more toothsome fried twice.

The younger daughter nervously interviewed for her first job at Oh Mamma’s, and under the inspired mentorship of Jody and Joe Klinedinst, bloomed from a shy, cheese-curious vegan to a confident junior fromagère who could expertly offer shards of crystal-forward cheddars and smudges of Humboldt Fog to customers eager to sample something new. She returned from work one evening, tossed her apron into the laundry, and demanded, in mock outrage, “Mom, how have I never known about pancetta?”—another family member destined for a life of culinary curiosity.

A few years ago, our eldest and her spouse moved to Manhattan. As often as we can, we visit and sample their favorites: blistered slices with fresh basil at Mama’s TOO! and custard-filled tortes at the Hungarian Pastry Shop near Columbia University. (Peak hygge is nibbling a chocolate cream puff in a cozy corner table there while huge snowflakes swirl against the bakery window like animated stars.) Our New Yorkers also introduced us to the crunch-edged, spring-green scallion pancakes from Vanessa’s in Chinatown and fluffy, magical Japanese kakigori, shaved ice desserts that arrive at your table the impossible size of a snow person’s head, topped with a beret of whipped cream. These strawberry or coffee syrup–soaked spheres slowly collapse, spoonful by eager spoonful.

Our former cheesemonger now lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her tastebuds lead her toward fresh local flavors. In December she amazed us with dinner outside under a fuchsia canopy of bougainvillea and the starchy comfort of mofongo, its salty mashed plantains a plush bed for spiced shrimp. And we fell for the local lime-and-salt-seasoned aguacates (avocados), creamy, fruity and larger than my hand. I hardly wanted to eat anything else. We rang in the new year on the paint-box cobbled streets of Viejo San Juan, leaving the “s” off “gracias,” as locals do, when we sang out our thanks for tiny glasses of chilled coquito, a holiday drink sweetened with cream of coconut and spiked with rum, vanilla and cinnamon—a new family tradition.

By taking turns teaching and learning, we’ve become a family of foodies. And we have a new baby-sized food mill on hand, anticipating, spoonful by spoonful, the next generation’s taste for adventure.

April Lidinsky teaches in the Women's and Gender Studies and Master of Liberal Studies programs at Indiana University South Bend. She's an experimental gardener, an adventurous cook and the proud mother of two adult children who are even savvier than she in the kitchen. A lover of sentences, she has written regularly for WVPE's "Michiana Chronicles" series since 2001.