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Now that my wife and I are talking about getting pregnant, we’re rushing to do all the things that childless people take for granted. We sleep a lot. We travel as much as we can afford. We probably drink too much wine.
But we also talk and think and worry aboutfamily, and everything that word entails.
Currently, our tiny two-person family looks like this: My photographer wife, Tanya, is a first generation Mexican-American; she spent her childhood in Texas, in a home that culturally felt more Mexican than anything else. Meanwhile, I’m a chef who has spent the last six years cooking Mexican food professionally, traveling extensively through Mexico, and opening six Mexican restaurants. But I’m still as generic-caucasian-Californian as it gets.
You’d think we’d make a lot of Mexican food in our house. And it’s true that almost every Sunday I ask Tanya what she wants for dinner, and her answer is always the same: “How about we just do carne asada?”
But we never end up doing carne asada. There’s something about it that feels too close to what Tanya is really craving.
Tanya grew up in a household with weekly Sunday barbecues. These were long, relaxed affairs that started in the morning, when her dad would head to the carniceria and her mom would start the rice and beans. Eventually aunts and uncles and cousins would come over, carrying beer and potato salad and homemade salsas. There’d never be enough chairs for everyone; there was no table to set; and there was no start or end time to the meal. The day just sort of rolled out: Whenever a steak was ready, a few tortillas would be thrown on the grill, and whoever could tear themselves away from the latest gossip would be handed a taco.
I can make rice and beans and salsa. And I can put together tacos in my sleep. But my rice and salsa will never be like Tanya’s mother's, and my tacos will never taste like her dad’s. The terroir is missing.
So for our own Sunday barbecues, we’re not replicating the tradition Tanya grew up with. We’re creating our own.
Our Sundays are a little more solitary—we frequently consider inviting friends over, and generally talk ourselves out of it. We sleep in as late as we can, knowing we’ll soon have a baby that will wake us at 4am. We make breakfast, but we skip lunch.
In the late afternoon, when we start getting hungry, Tanya lights thechimneyand heats up the grill. Igrill a whole fishor aspatchcocked chicken, and I almost always make a salsa, even if we aren’t having tortillas—meals just don’t feel complete without salsa anymore.
Is it anything like what Tanya grew up with? Not really. Except in one way: As hard as it is for me to wrap my chef-y brain around, our barbecues aren't really about the food. It’s about putting the phones away and turning off the PlayStation. It’s about listening to music and reading a (very) old issue of the New Yorker. And it’s about just being outside, and being together as a family—no matter if that family is 30 people, two people, or, eventually, three.
Katy Smithis a chef in San Diego.
