Daughter has made some wonderful friends in Tacoma, and they all seem to have a shared interest in good food. Daughter tells me weekly what she is cooking, and has really expanded her cooking repertoire.

The other week, Daughter and a friend realized the extent of their food obsession when Friend and her husband went out to eat at a favorite restaurant and found that a beloved spinach artichoke dip with sun-dried tomatoes had been discontinued permanently. Her friend was horrified to find herself actually bursting into tears at the disappointment. Her grandfather had died quite recently, but Friend said that had nothing to do with her reaction to the loss of the dip. That dip was really special to her.

Daughter is always eager to point out when I haven’t been a perfect parent, and the spinach dip incident reminded her of the time she phoned me in tears because a friend had forgot to put a pan of enchiladas that Daughter had made in the fridge overnight, rendering them somehow spoiled. She admits she reacted to it like a 13 year old girl. Her takeaway from the phone call, though, was her hearing me say “You talk to her, Chris. I can’t deal with her right now.” Husband proceeded to say all the right things to her, about how this wasn’t about the enchiladas but about her disappointment that her friend had been careless. Dad 1, Mom 0.

What foods do you have an emotional reaction to? How did your parents differ in their ways of interacting with you? What is your favorite artichoke recipe?

Our next door neighbors are a delightful pair of educators whose children we involve in our gardening. One of their extended families has a German tradition of eating cooked Swiss Chard doused with vinegar. That is certainly not our experience with German cuisine, but who am I to judge. We always grow chard so I can make an Italian pie of greens, but our harvests have been so plentiful we always have chard to spare. This year is no exception, and we have so much frozen chard from previous years that I shall not need much this year, except for a bit for a butternut squash and fresh chard phyllo pie recipe husband found. We always grow Argentata, a white chard variety.

The neighbors have happily harvested our chard on two occasions this summer, always looking sheepish and guilty, as though they were robbing us or doing something illegal. We are so happy to share chard with them, and would probably plant chard even if we didn’t need it, just because we believe family traditions are important. The neighbors consider it a real gift.

What family traditions do you think are important to keep? What traditions do you want to eliminate? What simple things do you consider a good gift? How do you prepare chard?