My Fat Dad

by Dawn Lerman

  Just as I was about to stop, as I could easily get carried away when I sang the glories of whole wheat flour, oat flour, and nut flours, Sarah said, “Tell me more. I think what you are saying is quite fascinating. Do you know what foods help prevent skin breakouts?”

  “Of course I do,” I said, my heart racing as I began reciting, “Nothing too sweet, nothing too salty, nothing too greasy, and especially no chocolate cake, no chocolate ice cream, no chocolate candy bars, and no chocolate spread!”

  “How would I survive?” Sarah asked in despair, looking down at her chocolate-filled plate.

  “I will introduce you to carob.”

  “Who is Carob?”

  “Carob is not a person. It’s a food that will change your life. It tastes just like chocolate, but it is healthy and has one-third the calories of chocolate and none of the evil side effects associated with chocolate. I can show you how to make carob brownies, carob chip cookies, carob ice pops, carob mousse cheesecake, and carob-coated popcorn.”

  Sarah wrote down everything I was saying, asking me question after question. While she was not concerned with her weight, she was obsessed with her skin and would do anything to get a flawless complexion like the girls on the cover of Seventeen magazine. I promised her my recipes would not only clear up her complexion, but taste delicious. Sarah was willing to give my recipes a try, as she considered herself very cutting-edge and open-minded. Up to now, Sarah had always been the one enlightening me. She knew more about makeup and music, and was the only girl in our class who got French manicures on a weekly basis. I admired all Sarah’s pretty clothes and jewelry, wondering how she decided each day what necklace, what jacket, and what shoes would transform our dull uniforms into something so glamorous. Sarah had a bulletin board with all the style do’s and don’ts for teenage girls. Now it was my turn to teach her.

  We made a plan to bake every Tuesday and Thursday after school. Monday she had ballet, Wednesday piano, and weekends were complicated—alternating between her beach house with her mom and stepfather and her dad and stepmother’s apartment on Sixty-Ninth and Madison. But Tuesdays and Thursdays, we made a standing appointment to cook after we watched General Hospital.

  “I Think Luke and Laura are the most romantic couple on daytime TV,” Sarah said as she made our appointment official, entering it into her leather Coach date book. She had a plan for everything and was the most organized person I had ever encountered. Not only did she have her days of the week planned, but she also had her whole life mapped out.

  “You know I am going to live in Paris as soon as I graduate college. But I am debating if I should be a film actress, a fashion editor, or the CEO of a major makeup and skincare line.”

  While there were a few variables, Sarah pretty much had her future planned. She would study at an Ivy League university, spend her junior year at the Sorbonne, have a villa in the South of France, and be married to a handsome European with a private jet. She even had the china and silver patterns that she expected to receive as wedding gifts picked out.

  Sarah had a twenty-year plan. I was always just planning how to get through the day, wondering how we would pay for all the ingredients in all the recipes we were going to bake, if my dad would come home for dinner, and if my mom and sister would call. I was consumed with constant worry more about my mom and my sister than about myself. Even though two weeks earlier, a strange, disoriented man had found his way into our house. I was standing in our bathroom naked, just about to jump into the shower, when I turned around and there he stood. I screamed, and he screamed louder.

  “You are not my social worker!” he cried.

  I quickly wrapped myself in a towel, grabbed a scissor, and escorted him down the stairs and out the glass front door, where anyone could see in and open the door with a big shove.

  When my mom finally phoned that night, I hysterically relayed the mishap about the crazy stranger. She replied, “You are okay, aren’t you? We’re sure lucky to live across from the Cuban Embassy, where there are round-the-clock security guards. That’s better than Sarah’s doorman building.”

  But I definitely preferred Sarah’s doorman building to my desolate, exposed brownstone—usually trying to stay at her house as long as I could. But her mother made it clear that weekdays were not for extended visits; Sarah had responsibilities, piano practice, and an early bedtime. I had none of those so I could linger until Sarah’s mother would take her in the other room and start muttering under her breath. When she politely excused the two of them, I knew that was my cue to leave. Her mom always looked a little guilty about sending me home, but not guilty enough to ask me to stay. I knew Sarah tried her best.

  One day, during English class, when Ms. Lippincott was writing the characters from Romeo and Juliet on the board, Sarah passed me a quick note. She wanted to know exactly what we were going to bake every Tuesday and Thursday during each month. She already made pumpkin bread every year for her building Halloween party, gingerbread cookies for the annual Christmas dinner that her family hosted even though they were Jewish, and Linzer cookies with a big dollop of strawberry jam for the school Valentine’s Day bake sale. She wanted to know how I would remake and improve on her nearly perfect recipes that were passed down from her grandmother, who was a fabulous cook. And she wanted to learn everything about carob, wondering how it would alter her cookies in flavor, texture, and sweetness. Once I satisfied her questions, it was time to satisfy her sweet tooth.

  I gave her a list of ingredients that her mother agreed to purchase. The first Tuesday I came over to bake, Sarah had all the ingredients displayed on her kitchen counter and had rewritten my recipe into a pretty notebook, which she had propped up onto a little easel. There were glass bowls, measuring spoons, an electric mixer, and baking sheets, all perfectly laid out.

  “I thought it would be more time-efficient if everything was ready to go, so I arranged it all last night before I went to bed.”

  Sarah was running our afternoon like a professional operation, and her precision was making me nervous. We didn’t even have our usual snack, which sometimes substituted for my dinner. As we were dividing up the ingredients, separating the wet from the dry, I made Sarah try a carob chip on its own before it was blended into the dough.

  I watched her as she chewed, eating a couple before she decided to speak.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Kind of chalky and gritty. But I cannot give you a proper analysis until they are melted and baked into the cookies.”

  I loved the flavor of the carob, although the chips did not melt as well as chocolate. I chose not to tell Sarah that. As we snacked on a couple more chips, we worked efficiently, blending the whole wheat flour, the wheat germ, the brown rice syrup, and the applesauce together and shaping them into little golf-ball-sized balls that we flattened with the back of a fork after we laid them onto the parchment-lined baking sheet.

  “Why do some of your cookies have six chips and some have four or five? It is important that every cookie looks and tastes the same,” said Sarah.

  “It is important that every cookie tastes good,” I corrected, as I sampled the raw dough. “Oh my goodness, they are really good, you really can’t wait until they are baked,” I said, holding a finger full of the dough up to Sarah’s mouth. She hesitantly took her spoon and took a bite from the bowl.

  “They are scrumptious, really scrumptious!” I could tell she was surprised, taking another spoonful of the raw dough from the bowl. “I could imagine these with peanut butter or with walnut chunks.”

  “I have made tons of variations. Sometimes I add in oats, or bananas, or carob powder, or whatever I have in the house.”

  “Wouldn’t that usually be nothing?” she said and cackled. It was true, but it hurt my feelings nonetheless.

  “Let’s try one batch with just chips and one batch with raisins and oats,” suggested Sarah.

 
While the cookies were baking, we went into Sarah’s room. Browsing through her record collection, I grabbed a bright pink album cover. “Remember this one?”

  “That album used to be my favorite when I was young.”

  “You are still young,” I said.

  “I am not! I’ll be fourteen in a couple of months.”

  “Please put it on,” I said, begging on my hands and knees.

  “Okay, but do not tell anyone we listened to this album.”

  It only took a couple of bars of melody and a few carob chips before Sarah began blurting out the words to “Free to Be You and Me.” And there she was, the girl I remembered meeting the first day of seventh grade, with her waist-length blond hair, matching Raggedy Ann socks, and big smile. She was back, the best friend I missed from before her mother remarried, before my mom and sister left on tour, before the mean eighth-grade clique stole her from me. She was just Sarah, and I was just Dawn, happy and carefree. We spun around until we were dizzy and fell to the ground. We danced around her house the way my grandmother and I used to dance around her kitchen while we cooked. We were not high school girls, we were not burdened with expectations, we were not cool, we were just us—silly and youthful in our own little world—the way we were when we used to laugh for hours after we made prank calls to Tommy Goldsmith. He looked like Barry Manilow, and we would laugh uncontrollably, hanging up before we ever got the words out, asking him if he was in love with Lisa or Lauren.

  We baked batches of cookies on that first cool fall afternoon, testing them while they were still soft and warm. With each new batch and new inspiration, we improvised with different ingredients—throwing in chopped cranberries and dates to cookies that were only supposed to be flavored with honey. I showed Sarah that it was okay to make each cookie a little different. “After all, they are just for us,” I said.

  “What if they were not just for us? What if we started a cookie business?”

  “Yes, we could call it Healthy Cookies,” I shouted out.

  “No! That’s a terrible name. No one would buy them if they thought they were healthy. I will figure out how to market them. After all, this is not my first business.” Sarah boasted that she was the only girl on Fire Island who was able to make a significant amount of money by selling painted seashell earrings and bracelets when she spent a summer there with her longest best friend, Madeline. “You can come up with the recipes and hand out the flyers. I will come up with the pricing, the logo, and the wrapping. Presentation is everything,” she stated as she handed me a cloth napkin soaked with seltzer to remove the carob stains from my blouse.

  Over the next couple of weeks we made dozens of cookies. We brought them to school for our friends to try. I even brought a batch to Olga—who was very encouraging even though she did not actually say she liked them. “I just like my cookies a little sweeter, a little more buttery,” said Olga.

  Sarah wrote down every comment and made a graph of which varieties were the most popular. We even added sweet potato bread and blueberry bran muffins to our menu. All the girls seemed to love everything we handed out. Before Sarah let anyone take a bite, she made sure to mention all the benefits of our baked goods. “Our products will whittle your middle and make your skin glow. Look at how bright my eyes are,” she announced, having the girls observe how her blue eyes really stood out now. “How great is that?” she would say as all the girls in the class gathered around her. Sarah was already known as the resident beauty expert, and everyone who ever ate with me knew about my obsession with eating healthy, as I would go through handfuls of napkins blotting off all the grease and adding spinach and broccoli when we went for pizza after school.

  Within weeks, we were ready to launch. Sarah had drummed up a bunch of business. She came up with the company name. I came up with the company slogan: “Dawn’s Desserts and Sarah’s Sweets—A not too sweet cookie for a sweeter, more gorgeous you.” Together we distributed flyers all over the neighborhood, handing out samples to all the doormen on Sarah’s block. Within the first week, we received several orders, and when we realized we did not have any money for supplies, Sarah’s mother lent us thirty dollars to pay for the initial cost, provided we would pay her back from our profits. We both agreed, signing an official contract. I was hoping to make enough money to buy my sister an eight-track tape player shaped like a robot that I’d seen at FAO Schwarz. Sarah was hoping to make enough money to buy a pair of new Frye boots. We both agreed that our first bit of profit would go toward a celebration lunch. I suggested Forty Carrots for frozen yogurt with berries at Bloomingdale’s. She suggested the Magic Pan on Fifty-Seventh Street for chicken crepes. We finally agreed on Tavern on the Green for brunch, where we feasted on baskets of raisin bread and split an order of Salmon Benedict. The waiter did not even seem to be annoyed that we did not have enough money for two entrées. And I let myself indulge in a brunch of carbohydrates—being that it was a celebration.

  For months, we baked on those Tuesdays and Thursdays, blasting show tunes and singing at the top of our lungs on her fire escape, hoping that someone passing by would not only be delighted by the smells coming from her kitchen but be charmed by our charisma and our voices. I taught Sarah every Annie song-and-dance combination, and she taught me to have self-confidence and pride in the way I looked. She even came over to my house and folded all my clothes. With me, she was not so serious; with her, I was not such a mess.

  But then Sarah auditioned and was cast in Pippin at the all-boys school, Collegiate, where her mother thought she would hobnob with the right kind of people, and she was no longer free on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And I became obsessed with a group of kids at school called the Parkies who hung out at the Bandshell in Central Park smoking pot, playing Frisbee, and pledging their allegiance to Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

  Even though our business venture lasted only a couple of months, and Sarah and I branched out into different social circles, we vowed to honor each other’s secrets as well as our recipes for a lifetime.

  Carob Chip Cookies

  Yield: 12–14 giant cookies

  1⁄3 cup oil or Earth Balance butter substitute or butter (plus a little extra for greasing the pan if not using parchment paper)

  1⁄4 cup mashed banana or applesauce

  1⁄2 cup brown rice syrup

  1⁄4 cup maple sugar

  11⁄2 teaspoons vanilla

  11⁄4 cups unbleached white flour

  1⁄2 cup whole wheat pastry flour

  1⁄2 teaspoon baking powder

  1⁄2 teaspoon sea salt

  1 cup dairy-free carob chips

  1⁄2 cup walnuts, crushed (optional)

  1⁄2 teaspoon wheat germ (optional)

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease or line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. In a bowl beat together the oil, banana, brown rice syrup, maple sugar, and vanilla, and blend well. In a separate bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well. Fold in the carob chips, nuts, and wheat germ, if using. Using a teaspoon, drop heaping spoonfuls of dough onto the prepared baking sheet, placing them 2 inches apart. Flatten them a little with your hand or the back of a fork. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the cookies are slightly browned at the edges. Do not overcook; otherwise they will get too hard. Let cool for 10 minutes.

  Protein-Packed Linzer Cookies

  Yield: 12 cookies

  8 tablespoons coconut oil or softened butter (put a tablespoon aside for greasing the baking sheet if you are not using parchment paper)

  1 egg, beaten

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  2 tablespoons nondairy milk

  1⁄3 cup maple syrup

  1⁄2 cup almond flour or oat flour (plus additional, as needed, for thickening)

  11⁄4 cups oat flour (you can make your own oat flour by blending oats in a ble
nder)

  Pinch of salt

  1⁄4 teaspoon baking powder

  1⁄4 cup strawberry jam or preserves

  Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine the oil, egg, vanilla, milk, and maple syrup and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix together the flours, salt, and baking powder. Then combine the ingredients from both bowls and mix together with your hands until they form a sticky dough. If the dough feels a touch dry, you can add a splash of water to thin it. If it feels a bit wet, you can add a touch more almond or oat flour. Roll the dough into balls with your hands; I like mine to be 11⁄2 to 2 inches across. Place them on a parchment paper–covered or lightly greased cookie sheet, flatten them slightly with your palm, and push a thumbprint into each ball. Add a dollop of jam into the thumbprint. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned on the bottom. Let cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired, before eating.

  Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

  Yield: 18 cookies

  1 cup brown sugar or sugar of choice

  1 cup crunchy peanut butter

  1 egg, beaten

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Stir all the ingredients together until smooth. Roll into 1-inch balls with your hands. Press down with the back of a fork and then press again from the opposite direction, to form the crisscross pattern on top. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove cookies from the oven and let cool before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling.

  16

  Chocolate Love