My Fat Dad

by Dawn Lerman

  My sister loved taking charge, and it was fun to watch her become empowered in the role of the big sister. I hoped my sister would always remain confident, knowing how much I loved and believed in her. What I did not realize was how much I loved it when she took care of me.

  In the walls of our castle, the world was perfect, and no matter what snacks we dreamed up, they always tasted delicious.

  Hearing my mom yell that the fondue was getting cold, we turned off the flashlights and left our safe haven. “Good luck,” we whispered to each other, making our way back to the table. We ate in silence, neither of my parents speaking to each other or us.

  That night, when my grandmother Beauty phoned, I told her it would be a long time before I wished for my mom to make dinner again. A couple of days later, the envelope that Beauty sent me was a little thicker than usual. It included a recipe for a beef and bean cholent, sweet potato fries, and chocolate fudge, and a note saying, You can’t fix your parents, but you can always make a hearty pot of love for you and April. Once in a while a dish might break, but do not let anyone or anything break your spirit.

  Cheese Fondue

  Yield: 4 servings

  1⁄2 pound Swiss cheese, shredded

  1⁄2 pound Gruyère cheese, shredded

  1 cup dry white wine of choice

  2 teaspoons flour

  1 garlic clove, peeled

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  1 loaf French bread, cubed for dipping

  Lightly steamed or raw vegetables of choice, for dipping

  Raw apple, for dipping (optional)

  Melt the cheeses at a low heat in a pot on the stovetop. Add in the wine, mixing slowly. Make sure the mixture is smooth, with no lumps, and then add the flour. Don’t let the cheese boil. Before transferring the cheese from the stovetop pot to the fondue serving pot, rub the inside of the serving pot with the garlic clove. This will give a garlicky essence to your fondue, adding extra flavor and aroma. Serve the cheese fondue with a variety of dipping choices: cubed French bread and lightly steamed vegetables or, if desired, raw apple slices.

  Princess Pancakes

  Yield: 4 pancake sandwiches or 8 open-faced princess pancakes

  4 eggs

  1 cup cottage cheese

  I cup old-fashioned rolled oats

  1 tablespoon milk of choice

  Oil or butter, for frying

  1⁄3 cup strawberry fruit spread, or 1 cup heated strawberries sautéed with 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 teaspoon of sugar

  Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

  Put the eggs, cottage cheese, oats, and milk into a blender and puree into a smooth batter-like consistency.

  Grease a frying pan. When the pan is hot, ladle the pancake batter into the hot skillet—cooking one pancake at a time. When each pancake begins to bubble, flip over. When lightly browned, remove from heat and put on a plate. When all eight pancakes are made, spread the jam or warmed strawberry mixture between each pair of two pancakes and make a sandwich. Serve with a light dusting of powdered sugar, if desired.

  Beef and Bean Cholent

  Yield: 4–6 servings

  3⁄4 cup dry white beans

  3⁄4 cup dry kidney beans

  2 pounds boneless beef chunks, cut in cubes

  4 medium-size potatoes, peeled and cubed

  1 medium-size onion, peeled and cubed

  Salt and pepper, to taste

  11⁄2 teaspoons paprika

  11⁄2 cups water (plus additional, as needed, for thinning)

  2 cups chicken broth

  Soak the white beans and kidney beans in water, covered, for 8 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drain and rinse the beans. Combine the beans, meat, potatoes, onions, salt, pepper, and paprika in a Dutch oven. Add the water and broth. Cover the pot tightly. Put the pot in the oven for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 200 degrees and bake overnight, for at least 10 hours. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will be. Do not stir. The next day if it is too thick, you can add a little water and stir.

  April’s Mock Pecan Pie

  Yield: 2 servings

  6 medjool dates

  6 teaspoons nut butter (pecan or almond)

  6 crushed pecans

  12 chocolate chips

  Crushed cereal of choice (Cheerios or cornflakes work best), optional

  Make a vertical slit in the date and remove the pit. Fill the center with a teaspoon each of nut butter. Then top with chopped pecans, and chocolate chips. Sprinkle with crushed cereal.

  12

  Annie and the Eight-Month Auditioning Process

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

  I had always been a dreamer; but as much as I was a dreamer, I was a girl of action. After seeing the Broadway play Annie, I was in love. I cried, laughed, and was filled with an overwhelming feeling of joy. I wanted to be in that show as much as I ever wanted anything in my life, but I couldn’t dance or sing, and I had stage fright. I always dreamed of being an actress—being in a world where I was loved and adored, where the applause was for me.

  Once, when I was seven, my dad let me audition for a Frosted Flakes commercial he was working on. Usually I couldn’t because they wouldn’t let employees’ family members audition, but this one time, the agency made an exception and my dad realized that no kid could get as excited about food as me.

  It was my big chance, and my dad said if I wanted to be in the commercial, I would have to describe the ecstasy of the way the sugar coating melted in my mouth, and how crunchy the flakes were before they dissolved on my tongue. He demonstrated what he meant with a big bowl of cereal, crunching with joy.

  I took one bite and told him the cereal was too sweet. He said, “If you want to be an actress, especially if you want to be a commercial actress, you have to look directly into the camera and convince everyone watching TV that you’ve just tasted the most delicious food on earth. Liking the product is not your job. Making every kid in America desire the sweet cereal with the plastic collectible toy is your goal. Capice?”

  The first couple of times I recited the lines, I tried to impress my dad with how animated I could be.

  “You’re only smiling with your mouth. Smile with your whole being. I don’t believe you. Tasting this cereal should be as exciting as Neil Armstrong walking on the moon,” he directed, grabbing a couple more handfuls of the cereal. “If you can’t convey how mind-blowing this cereal is, you can’t audition.”

  The next spoonful I took, I imagined it was my grandmother’s cinnamon oatmeal cookies—sweet but not too sweet, crunchy but not hard, with just the right amount of nutmeg and raisins. I was feeling exhilarated just thinking about the cookies.

  “I don’t know what you are fantasizing about, but keep that look of pure delight on your face when you say the line!”

  “Frosted Flakes are greaaaaaaaaat!”

  “Louder, with more emotion.”

  “Frosted Flakes are greaaaaaaaaaat!”

  “One more time. Are Frosted Flakes good?”

  “NO, they’re GREAAAAAAAAAT!”

  “That’s it. You nailed it!”

  The next day, at the real audition, I looked into the camera and stated my name and age. With pure conviction I recited my line, “Frosted Flakes are GREAAAAAAAT!” My love of Frosted Flakes was so convincing that I got the commercial.

  I was over the moon, but the night before the shoot, my front tooth fell out. In desperation, I called my Papa and begged for advice. He had worn dentures since he was twenty-three due to a quack dentist telling him his headaches would go away if he pulled out all his teeth. My grandmother always said, “Such a smart man, yet he is way too trusting of people.” I thought Papa would be an expert on this subject and would know exactly what to do. Papa’s teeth would float around all night
in a wooden salad bowl, but in the morning, he had a million-dollar smile. Papa said he used denture cream to keep his teeth in place, but no matter what I did—not a whole tube of denture cream that my Papa had left in our bathroom, or even a piece of bubblegum that I had saved from Halloween—my prickly tooth wouldn’t stay in place.

  “We can’t use a girl without a front tooth in our commercial,” my dad said. “It will make consumers feel like the cereal will rot their children’s teeth. We will have to recast the part.”

  I was replaced before I even made it to the set. But I loved the adrenaline rush of auditioning, and talking about food came very naturally to me. After my brief brush with fame, and once my front tooth grew in perfectly straight, I convinced my dad, who knew every commercial agent and casting director in Chicago, to please help me get representation so I could audition for commercials every day after school, like my friend Tamar.

  “Please, Dad, I really want to be an actress,” I begged, showing him all the different faces I had been practicing in the mirror for weeks: happy face, sad face, scared face. When he said no, I made my best puppy dog eyes and he finally gave in, calling some of his contacts.

  “Most kids usually just end up disappointed. Your picture will probably just land in the trash.”

  “If I don’t try, I will never know what it feels like to be inside a TV.”

  My dad was amused. “It just looks like you are inside a TV. That is the illusion of film.”

  “Okay, but I want the illusion.”

  My dad just shook his head. “You know, you are just as persistent as your mother when she has her mind set on something.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing to be like my mom, but the important thing was my dad agreed to help me, setting up an appointment at the Shirley Hamilton Talent Agency.

  During the interview, Shirley had me memorize some sides—which is a show business term for a part of a script. I enthusiastically recited my lines. “I love M&M’s. They melt in your mouth, not your hand. I want the yellow, the red, the orange. I want them all!” I said, smiling, picturing myself on top of a chocolate-covered mountain. Pleased with my sincerity, Shirley signed me to their commercial division. She even gave my mom the name of a theater company for kids and a photographer for real headshots.

  The day of the photo shoot for my composite card, I had to bring three changes of clothes and wear three different hairstyles to achieve different looks—all-American girl, tomboy, bookworm. My career was taking off. I had headshots, an agent, and was a member of Tom Thumb Players, where I played Yentl in Fiddler on the Roof. My mother wanted me to push the director for a bigger part since my only line was “We are going on a train and a boat. We are going on a train and a boat.” But I was happy with that one line and was glad to be part of an ensemble.

  The anxiety of being on stage by myself made my stomach turn somersaults, which is why I fancied myself a film or TV actress. I never felt nervous when I spoke into the camera. I felt like I was sucked into a wonderful dreamland where the words just effortlessly flowed and my smile was real. I was a hundred percent happy and confident in front of the camera, which was not how I felt in everyday life or school. While acting was pretend, the smile and the emotions that I experienced were sincere—even if I was describing something like green Jell-O, which I would normally never eat.

  After several auditions, I really got the hang of the acting thing, booking three jobs: one for a Keds campaign, one for a Sears catalogue, and one for a Burger King commercial where I had to bite into a leathery cold burger over sixty-five times. Eventually, they gave me a spit bag so I wouldn’t have to keep swallowing the greasy burger. When I finally said the line right, and the whole crew began clapping, it was as incredible as I’d imagined it would be.

  But then we moved to New York, and I did not have an agent, and my mom didn’t have time to drag me around to auditions, and my dad’s new ad agency had a strict rule of not using children of employees in campaigns. So my acting aspirations fell by the wayside even though my desires lingered.

  As the years passed, I kind of repressed my acting dreams. I had my sister to take care of, I was in a new school, I always had a lot of homework, and my real passion was becoming clear—re-creating traditional recipes with a healthy twist. I learned how to make my own high-fiber flour by pulsing oats in a blender, I learned how to make my own sweetener for cookies by soaking raisins in water and then pureeing the mixture into a syrup. I even learned to make my Bubbe Mary’s stuffed peppers a little more calorie-friendly by using brown rice, ghee, and tofu instead of white rice, schmaltz, and beef.

  But after seeing the show Annie on Broadway and watching the final encore where all the girls came out on stage for their second curtain call, I was filled with emotion and a burning desire to be on that stage. Hearing the applause growing louder, and seeing the orphans curtseying, and receiving a third standing ovation, tears started rolling down my face. I didn’t know what was happening to me. It was as if I had been asleep for a very long time and I had just awakened from a deep slumber. I knew I was not sad, but the tears kept flowing. I was so close—only three rows and an orchestra between me and a Broadway stage. I couldn’t stop thinking about how great it would be to be part of a cast.

  About a month after I saw the show, there it was in bold print in my mom’s Back Stage, the three little lines that would change my destiny and family life forever.

  Casting

  GIRLS 6–12 years old for an open audition for the First National Tour of Annie

  No professional experience necessary.

  I thought I was going to die from excitement. I fit the bill—no real experience necessary. I was twelve, but I looked young for my age, and I often felt like I was adopted. But as I looked at the requirements, even though there was no real experience necessary, I realized that not being able to sing and dance would be a big problem. Every dance teacher I had ever studied with told me I had two left feet and I had a dreadful voice. So there was no other choice than to do everything in my power to help my sister become an orphan. If I couldn’t land the part for myself, I knew I could coach April. My sister was charismatic, precocious, sassy, and was able to sing any song that she heard on the radio, hitting every high note.

  There was going to be an open call in a couple of weeks, and anyone could audition even if you were not in the professional theater union, Actors Equity. You just had to stand in line outside the Alvin Theatre on Fifty-Second and Broadway with a headshot and résumé and be prepared to sing a solo without an instrumental accompaniment. I had my work cut out for me, but I knew exactly what to do.

  The first step was a photo. April didn’t have a professional photo, but I had a Minolta camera that my grandfather had given me for my twelfth birthday. Making her look like an orphan was easy since my sister’s hair was always messy and knotty, and my photography teacher, Miss Burdett, said I was wonderful at capturing people’s true essence. The next task at hand would be teaching April a song, something that would make her stand out from the hundreds of girls that would be auditioning. When I told April about my plan, she was not nearly as overjoyed as I was.

  “If you want to be in it so badly, you audition.”

  “I would if I could, but you know I can’t sing.”

  “That’s for sure. You are an awful singer.”

  “That’s not nice. The point is that I would be so grateful if I had a sister who loved me as much as I loved you and would help me with this chance.” I tried to convince April how much fun it would be, how people would stand at the stage door every night and ask for her autograph, and she would go to opening night parties and be in the newspaper. When none of my pleading worked, I resorted to bribery. “I will make you a batch of my carob-frosted Rice Krispie treats.”

  “The ones with the peanut butter that you made for my birthday party?”

  “Yep, those
are the ones.”

  “No deal until you tell me exactly what I have to do.”

  “All you have to do is rehearse a couple of songs with me and go to the audition and show them how special you are. You know you are the most beautiful, talented girl in the world.”

  “Just because you think that does not mean everyone else thinks that.”

  “Of course they do. You are perfect.”

  “If I was perfect, those mean girls in the second grade would not tell me my hair looked like a rat’s nest and my uniform looked like an accordion,” April argued.

  “It’s so obvious they’re just jealous of you.”

  “No, I think they really think that. Who would be jealous of wrinkly clothes anyway?”

  “You know you have trouble waking up, so Mommy’s plan of letting you sleep in your uniform is not a bad idea. Anyway, when you get cast as an orphan, all those mean girls will be asking for your autograph.”

  “You promise you will not be skimpy with the frosting? And maybe throw in a batch of chocolate chip blondies, or fry up some salmon patties?”

  “Deal.”

  “Okay, I’m in, let’s get to work.”

  And so we began. After weeks of preparation, the big day was finally here. I had taken a great headshot of April that I developed and blew up at the photography lab at school, and I had written in my best handwriting a résumé that included April’s height, weight, and a list of plays that she had performed in at school. We rehearsed and rehearsed an original song called “The Witch Is Dead” from her second-grade talent show. While I would normally tell my sister to brush out the knots from her hair or change her slept-in school uniform, I said nothing. She looked exactly like an orphan. My mother even joined us, genuinely delighted about her youngest daughter’s prospects.