Honoring Dad

This month’s #letslunch had the theme of honoring our Fathers, since Father’s Day is in June. This one was especially poignant for me since many reminders of him all converge around this time. The posting date was June 8th (I am obviously late) which was Regina’s Relay for Life – the Canadian Cancer Society’s yearly event. You see, My Dad died of cancer nearly 5 years ago and his birthday is today. As I walked the survivor lap and the caregiver lap at Relay, I thought about dad a lot.

You see, I was Dad’s primary caregiver. My siblings had kids in school and lived much farther away than I, so I took my laptop and drove the 6 hours to Little River, SC, set up camp there and looked after Dad. I had a hard time deciding what to make since there were a few things that brought Dad to the front and center for me; stuffed squid, which he asked me to make in his final weeks, rufinata pane – an Italian horseradish bread that I did make and will post later, and Klondike Bars – yes, Klondike bars.

You see, not only did dad have stage IV cancer, he was a diabetic so sweet treats were typically a no-no. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office when we went to Duke for his second opinion and my Dad was complaining that I was the food police – not letting him have whatever he liked. The doctor looked at me and said ‘Karen, the diabetes is not going to kill him. Let him have a cookie’. Well, he preferred Klondike bars.

So I started by making the highest quality ice cream I could – it was actually more like gelato in that it had equal parts milk and heavy cream, two whole vanilla pods and 7 eggs! I froze it in my ice cream machine then spread it into a square baking pan to freeze really, really hard!

Then I cut it into squares and placed them on a wax paper covered sheet pan and returned to the freezer. You need a lot of freezer space for this treat since you will also need to place a second wax paper covered sheet pan in the freezer so that you can place the freshly enrobed ice cream squares on the cold sheet so that it will set before melting the ice cream.

The next step takes a lot of time an patience. You must temper the chocolate. A lot of things that call for tempered chocolate can be done using a quick temper method, where you simply partially melt the chocolate in the microwave & then stir to finish the melting but this one requires the slow melt over a double boiler, stirring in the remaining unmelted chocolate, cooling to at least 80 degrees and then heating and holding to about 85 degrees.

I had a lot of time to think about Dad during this process and realized that I have a lot of regrets about how I handled things during his treatment. I tried very hard to be a good nurse, monitoring his blood sugar, constantly insisting on more fluid intake and always trying to tempt him to eat since he was losing so much weight so quickly. I didn’t realize, until I had gone through treatment myself, how much the radiation hurt, how exhaustion can seep into your very bones, how your head pounds from chemo and how just being left alone for a while can be the best thing. I just wanted the best for him and I realize how patient he was with me when probably all he wanted was some peace.

Anyway, back to the chocolate that is now tempered – you have to work as quickly as possible to enrobe the ice cream since cold ice cream and warm chocolate are natural enemies – at least until they get together in the freezer that is! Take a look at the pics below to see the methodology.

Pop them back into the freezer for a couple of hours and enjoy!

I wish I had made these for Dad but undoubtedly, he would have thought I was nuts when you can simply pick up a box in the freezer section of ‘Wally World’ (his term for the Walmart grocery store). But making it gave me so much time for reflection. I cried making them and writing this. The moral of the story is to spend lots of time with your loved one, especially with a cancer diagnosis because you just don’t know how much time you will have. With Dad, we had about half as much time as the doctors guessed. I think we all knew he wouldn’t survive but we tried our damndest to inflict our own will on the disease. I wish I had given him one of these – or at least a few more of the store-bought variety. Illness be damned – make your loved one happy if even for a few short moments. You won’t regret it.