A little pre-Father's Day tribute

My dad is the best cook I know. Most of what he makes isn't fancy or particularly difficult; it's thoughtful, well-cooked food that always tastes good (and always comes out at the same time).

Tonight, while I was making dinner, I realized how much I've learned from watching him cook. The meal wasn't anything fancy - steamed green beans, rice, sauteed chicken thighs with a lemon-white wine-caper sauce - but I could tell that the things I was doing were skills I'd picked up from him: how to season the flour, how to get a nice crispy outside on the chicken, how to make the sauce. I didn't have a recipe, just an idea of what I wanted for dinner and how I was going to do it. That's something he told me a long time ago when I asked him how he had figured out how to make something: "I just thought of how I wanted it to taste and I made it." As an eight-year-old, I found that pretty amazing; as a 28-year-old, I still do. Hopefully, I'm getting to the point where I can do it too.