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that she’s older, she helps me cook, and I find that when she does, she tends to experiment more and tends to eat more. So if I can, I involve her in the meals.
    Before kids, my wife worked, and we had schedules where I would shop for the meal as I came home. I’d stop at the local butcher or the local fish market, and I’d put an entire kind of multicourse meal together before my wife got home. Now that we’re parents, it’s more about rushing home to have food ready for the kids, and possibly even for us, if we’re going to eat together by 5:30 or 6:00 and do some other things around the house. One thing that’s changed with kids is that I do tend to do more cooking ahead of time. I definitely prepare something one day and then freeze it or maybe eat it over the course of a couple of days if I don’t freeze it.
    If you’re just starting to cook, the best advice I have is to be patient, recognize that you’ll make mistakes, and know that not every dish will turn out the way you want it to. In fact, many of mine don’t turn out the way I want them to. So I keep experimenting. Most importantly, get involved with cooking if you want an alternative to the everyday meals that you’re going to see, whether they’re in restaurants or from the food counter at a grocery store or from a takeout. Do it because you want to get in touch with what you’re eating. Know what the ingredients are. Know what you’re putting into your body. Know why you’re doing it. Control the portions. Control the different things that go into it so that you yourself are creating the taste. At a very important level that I think we tend to forget in this society, you’re controlling your health through your food.
    There’s something else about cooking that my wife and I have talked about between ourselves and with other friends who are of a similar age. The women were raised by moms who were coming out of the fifties and left the home—many for the first time in generations—to start working. These moms didn’t pass along to their daughters, who are my wife’s age, knowledge about cooking. So my wife and many of her friends never learned how to cook, and frankly they don’t have a passion for it.
    I’m hoping that by involving my daughters in cooking, they’ll have a passion for preparation, they’ll have a passion for food in general, a passion for pairing foods with other foods, or foods with wines. And I just think food is so much about enjoyment of life. And hopefully, they pick that up. Maybe, if nothing else, they pick up an element of creativity from it.
    Recipe File
    Miso Cod
    This recipe is adapted from one by Nobu Matsuhisa.
    2 pounds black cod fillets (salmon can work as a substitute, but regular cod cannot)
1 cup sake
½ cup mirin
1½ cups miso paste (white)
2 tablespoons sugar
    Wash and dry the cod fillets and cut into ½-pound portions.
    In a small saucepan, bring the sake to a quick boil, then add the mirin and the miso paste until dissolved.
    Add the sugar, stirring until dissolved.
    Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature (the refrigerator works well to speed up the cooling).
    In a plastic bag, add the miso mixture to the cod, and allow to marinate for 2 hours minimum, up to 24 hours. If marinating longer than 2 hours, then put it in the refrigerator.
    Preheat the oven to 425°F.
    Remove the fish from the miso mixture and arrange the fish, skin side down, in a baking pan or dish, then place in the preheated oven for 12 to 15 min, until the top surface of the fish is a caramel brown and the fish begins to visibly flake (do not turn over or flip the fish while cooking).
    Serve with coconut rice, garnished with sesame seeds.
    New Mexico Chili and Beans
    This recipe is adapted from the recipes of my mother and grandmother.
    2 white onions, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups pinto beans (sorted and soaked for at least 2 hours, or overnight, which is better)
1 russet potato, peeled and quartered
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