My Fat Dad Read online

  “Dawn Lerman grew up Jewish in the seventies. I grew up Italian. Might sound different, but for the most part, it’s the same. Especially when it comes to food. The philosophy was simple, food = love. My Fat Dad hilariously and poignantly captures that essence. Whether you’re Italian, Jewish, or anything else, you can relate to how family, food, and the love of both affect how we grow up and live our life. Mangia!”

  —Ray Romano, Emmy award–winning actor

  “Everything you want in a book about food: thoughtful, moving, funny, and, of course, delicious (see the recipe on sweet potato latkes). Dawn reminds us that eating is about much more than protein and carbs and nutrients—it’s about family, history, and identity. Dawn’s grandmother put it best: ‘I can find my heritage in a bowl of soup.’”

  —A. J. Jacobs, journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Drop Dead Healthy

  “Dawn Lerman takes the reader along on one of life’s important journeys—to find true nourishment. Her discoveries about the powerful ways that food connects us to our families, our heritage, and, ultimately, to ourselves are profound and beautiful.”

  —Andie Mitchell, New York Times bestselling author of It Was Me All Along

  “Dawn Lerman’s love letter to her father is a big, funny, welcome embrace to all of us fat dads out there.”

  —David Sax, James Beard Award–winning author of Save the Deli

  “Told with no fear, some surprises, and much humor, punctuated with delightful and delicious recipes from both the old and the new world of cooking, the best dishes being those made with love. We can all relate to a life obsessed with food; and Dawn shows that food often does equal love, and that being fed well equates to being nurtured as well as nourished . . . A truly wonderful journey!”

  —Lisa Goldberg, cofounder of Monday Morning Cooking Club

  “[Lerman’s] passion for cooking and good food, a constant joy during a challenging childhood, shines throughout this touching memoir.”

  —Martha Rose Shulman, cookbook author, cooking teacher, and food columnist for The New York Times

  “Some of Dawn Lerman’s vivid childhood food memories made me smile; others brought tears to my eyes. I particularly enjoyed reading about her inspiring grandmother, who, with her love and her delicious cooking, saved Dawn Lerman’s life ‘spoonful by spoonful,’ patiently teaching her to taste and to cook.”

  —Faye Levy, author of 1,000 Jewish Recipes

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2015 by Dawn Lerman.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14286-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lerman, Dawn.

  My fat dad : a memoir of food, love, and family, with recipes / Dawn Lerman.—Berkley trade paperback edition.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-425-27223-7

  1. Lerman, Dawn—Family. 2. Cooks—United States—Biography. 3. Cooking, American. I. Title.

  TX649.L478A3 2015

  641.5092—dc23

  [B]

  2015016904

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2015

  Cover design by Daniel Rembert.

  Cover photo © Tim Platt / Getty Images.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  This book describes the real experiences of real people. The author has disguised the identities of some, and in some instances created composite characters, but none of these changes has affected the truthfulness and accuracy of her story.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_2

  To my family:

  My dad, my mom, my sister April, my grandmother Beauty—

  without you, there would be no story.

  And to Dylan and Sofia, you are my world and my heart.

  CONTENTS

  Praise for My Fat Dad

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Introduction: Always Hungry

  1. All It Takes Is a Spoonful of Soup

  Beauty’s Chicken Soup with Fluffy Matzo Balls, Sweet Potato Latkes, Mohn Kichlach

  2. My New Baby Sister

  Aunt Jeannie’s Apple Strudel, Chocolate Chip Mandel Bread, Russian Borscht, Sure to Make You Feel Special Shirley Temple

  3. A Night at Bubbe’s

  Bubbe’s Sweet Brisket with Coca-Cola Marinade, Mushroom Barley Soup, Cinnamon Raisin Rugelach, Schmaltz and Grebenes

  4. Bye-Bye, Chicago

  The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie with the Cream Cheese Dough, Lo-Carb Chocolate Crepes

  PART TWO

  5. Taking a Bite from the Big Apple

  Lamb Stew with Sweet Potatoes, Beauty’s Baby Shell Kugel with Golden Raisins, Aranacini di Riso

  6. Swapping Moms

  Grandma Ethel’s New York Egg Cream, Saucy Susan Chicken Thighs and Legs

  7. The Hampton Diet

  Diet-Friendly Jell-O Chiffon Pie, Lo-Cal Gazpacho Soup, Date Nut Bread Infused with Taster’s Choice

  8. My Month at the Fat Farm

  Salmon and Leeks Baked in Parchment Paper, Duke University Weight-Loss Rice

  9. The Big Reveal

  Macrobiotic Apple Pie, Tomato Aspic, Sweet-and-Sour Meatballs

  10. My Holiday Wish

  Pumpkin Pie, Egg Coffee, Sweet Potato Hummus, Creamy Cashew Butternut Soup

  11. My Mom Makes Dinner

  Cheese Fondue, Princess Pancakes, Beef and Bean Cholent, April’s Mock Pecan Pie

  12. Annie and the Eight-Month Auditioning Process

  Peanut Butter Love—The Best Flourless Blondies, Rice Krispie Treats with a Chocolate Drizzle

  PART THREE

  13. Home with My Dad

  Sunday Gravy with Meatballs, Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

  14. Olga’s Lunch Room

  Beef Goulash, Olga’s Creamy Banana Pudding with Nilla Wafers

  15. Dawn’s Desserts and Sarah’s Sweets

  Carob Chip Cookies, Protein-Packed Linzer Cookies, Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

  16. Chocolate Love

  Fat Dad’s “Closet” Brownies, The Fudge T
hat Says “I Do”

  17. Visiting My Sister on Tour

  Banana Bread, Beauty’s Savory Meatloaf Cupcakes with Mashed Potato Frosting, Carrot Muffins

  18. Studio 54

  Traditional French Onion Soup, Pritikin-Approved Lentil Stew

  19. My Parents’ Divorce

  Violetta’s Vitello Tonnato, Real Italian Tiramisu, African Chai Tea

  Epilogue: My Dad’s Cancer

  Healing Mushroom Miso Soup, Mushroom Latkes, Beet Chips

  Photographs

  Author’s Note

  Beauty’s Salmon Patties

  Swap Chart

  Acknowledgments

  About Dawn Lerman

  PART ONE

  INTRODUCTION

  Always Hungry

  As far back as I can remember, there was an invisible wall that separated me from my dad, a distance that I could never completely penetrate. His closest relationship was with the bathroom scale—his first stop every morning and his last stop every evening. It controlled his moods, our days, what we were going to eat, and basically ruled our family life.

  My father, a brilliant copywriter in the Mad Men era of advertising, was known for his witty ad campaigns—he was responsible for such iconic slogans as “Fly the Friendly Skies of United,” “Coke Is It,” “This Bud’s for You,” and “Leggo My Eggo”—and being able to solve any image problem that was thrown his way. Unfortunately, he was not able to use the same problem-solving skills when it came to his weight. My dad was fat while I was growing up—450 pounds at his heaviest. His weight would go up and down like an elevator, depending on what diet he was on or not on that month. For six months, he ate only white rice; another time, he drank only shakes; and another time he had only Special K—hoping that after a week of eating the cereal, there would be only an inch to pinch. What was most vivid to me about those early years with my parents was the constant feeling of hunger that consumed me as my obese father rotated from diet to diet.

  Each week he would discover a new miracle plan, and my mom and I were forced to eat whatever freeze-dried, saccharin-loaded concoction he was testing, so as not to tempt him by eating “normal” food. Before I entered grade school, I was an expert on Atkins, Weight Watchers, the Barbie Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Drinking Man’s Diet, and the Sleeping Beauty Diet, able to recite their rules and agreeing with my dad that the world would be a better place if food did not have calories. Of course, I had no idea what a calorie was, but I knew it was something that was really upsetting to my father, and he would be happier without them.

  My mother, on the other hand, never understood what the big deal was with food and ate only one small meal a day—usually a can of StarKist light tuna right out of the can with a plastic fork—while standing up and chatting on the phone. She had no interest in preparing meals. Mostly what I ate consisted of my dad’s diet foods, a meal replacement shake, or on a good day a bagel or pizza in the car. We never ate meals together as a family. In fact, we never ate sitting down, which was really troubling to my pediatrician, Dr. Levy, who shook his head each time he weighed and measured me at my checkups. He would constantly tell my mom to put some meat on my bones, scolding her as he handed me an extra sucker, telling her she must feed me if she wanted me to grow.

  Despite Dr. Levy’s recommendations, my dad lined the shelves of our kitchen with mystery powders, shakes, and basically anything that had the word “NO” on it. No Sugar, No Starch, No Fat, No Calories, No Taste! With each new diet came an elaborate array of rules, until he could not take the boredom of the routine anymore—justifying the chips, the Mallomar cookies, the fried chicken, and fast-food burgers as market research for his ad campaigns. My dad felt that in order to create a good campaign, you needed to believe in the product you were selling. And he was always the best customer for the products he advertised, testing them excessively—especially when he was working on Kentucky Fried Chicken, Schlitz Beer, Sprite, and Pringles Potato Chips.

  “Regardless of what it looks like, I am eating to further my career,” my dad would proclaim, as he gobbled every morsel without sharing any with me. “My campaigns are nothing if they are not authentic,” he declared, closing his bedroom door behind him as he went in there to work, taking his “research” with him. Sometimes, I would sit at the door listening to him peck away at the typewriter, imagining that each potato chip he ate inspired him to come up with a witty slogan.

  While the diets came and went, the feeling of loneliness and the constant uncertainty lingered in the air. My only glimpse into a nourishing, normal environment, my only model of healthy eating, was the weekends I spent with my beloved grandmother. It was in her kitchen where I learned what love and happiness were—one recipe at a time.

  1

  All It Takes Is a Spoonful of Soup

  Beauty’s Chicken Soup with Fluffy Matzo Balls, Sweet Potato Latkes, Mohn Kichlach

  My maternal grandmother always told me if just one person loves you, that is enough to make you feel good inside and grow up strong. For me, that person was my grandmother Beauty.

  I spent most weekends with my grandmother because my parents liked to go out and stay out late, and my mother hated to pay good money for a babysitter only to find her asleep on the couch with Tinker Toys and Mr. Potato Heads sprawled all over the plush white, blue, and green patterned shag carpet in the living room when she returned home. It infuriated her that her Moroccan ashtrays on the side tables would inevitably be filled to the brim with menthol cigarettes and Juicy Fruit gum, and my dad would expect her to empty them while he would gleefully offer to drive the babysitter home—taking way longer than the five minutes the drive normally took.

  He insisted that he needed to stop at the Jewel for a case of Diet Black Cherry Shasta and a carton of Salem Menthol Lights, so he could make it through the night without snacking. “You do not want me to blow my diet, do you?” he would repeatedly say to my mom. “I only ate shrimp cocktail and iceberg lettuce all evening. I need support, not criticism.”

  My dad, an ambitious copywriter, recently hired by the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago, was invited out pretty much every night, either to the Playboy Club for a members’ only dinner or to one of the new nightclubs on Rush Street for cocktails with his creative team. “It’s a job requirement,” he would tell my mom, returning home to our third-floor walk-up apartment as the sun was coming up.

  While many nights during the week my father went out solo, my mom would not let him go without her on the weekends. “Why should I stay home while you are having all the fun?” He would try to convince her that wives weren’t allowed, and that Hugh Hefner, for whom my dad used to work as a columnist reviewing modern jazz albums, had many good connections that would further his career.

  “In order to achieve real success, I need to be able to socialize freely and not be held back. It’s about image. All the other wives seem to get it.” My dad, a VIP key holder at the Playboy Club, was very proud of his status—prominently dangling the key with the raised bunny ears while rolling his eyes back and forth to charm his way out of not having my mom tag along.

  My mom, usually swayed by his devilish brown eyes, refused to give in when it came to going out. She was an aspiring actress and wanted to be discovered. “I have no interest in being the kind of wife my mother is. It is 1966, not 1950. You are not the only one in this house who graduated from Northwestern and has career plans.”

  But my father would constantly remind her that she was the one who wanted to start a family, and now it was time for her to act like a proper mother and wife—especially since she was only teaching high school English part-time and it was his salary supporting them.

  I would spend most mornings, when I was not at my grandmother’s house, outside my parents’ door listening to them have the same argument over and over again.

  “Taking Dawn to the sandbox once a day
does not make you a good mother.”

  “Putting a roof over our heads does not make you a good father or husband.”

  Often, they would forget I was even in the house, raising their voices behind their closed bedroom door, and no matter how many times I knocked, they never seemed to hear. Hoping someone would remember I had not yet had breakfast, I would write a note, with pictures instead of actual words, and slip it under the door before I rushed into my room and packed my little paisley suitcase. I didn’t really want to run away; I just wanted to be found. No matter how long I hid in my closet, my parents never seemed to search for me; nor were they ever thrilled when I magically reappeared. Even though I was only three and a half, I was consistently consumed with an overwhelming feeling of sadness and pain in my stomach that would linger from Sunday till Friday. I knew the days of the week because my grandmother showed me how to check them off on a calendar. “There are only four checks between visits.”

  Each and every Friday night, when I arrived at my grandparents’ house, my grandmother would run down her front porch stairs in her lacey matching nightgown and robe set and scream in excitement, “My little beauty, my little beauty!” I thought when I heard her say “beauty” over and over again, she was trying to tell me her name—so Beauty is what I called her. The name stuck, and soon everyone in her small neighborhood of West Rogers Park in Chicago knew my grandmother as Beauty—including my grandfather Papa, my mother, and all the neighbors.

  The cooking aromas coming from her kitchen made my mouth water. Beauty always had a pot of something cooking on the stove, a freshly drawn bath, and a fluffy, lavender-smelling nightgown waiting for me. She would bathe me before we ate, softening my skin with cream and rose talcum powder that she dusted on my back with a big powder puff.

  For meals, she would lift me up and sit me in a special chair, which she piled high with several phone books—both the White and Yellow Pages—and an overstuffed round corduroy pillow. She wanted to make sure I could see above the table, which was set with silverware that she polished every week and an embroidered tablecloth that my Papa brought back from New Orleans, where he would go to visit his race horses, Glen and Phyllis, named after my mother and her brother Glen.