Kelly,
Beautiful food and even more beautiful use of your time. I hope your time cooking and grilling with you son is an joyful as cooking with my kids is. That photo of you and your son over the smoker both at work is my favorite photo of the bunch.
I am a big NPR guys and years ago on a cooking program a second generation older Italian grandmother said something close to the following:
Food and our family recipes are the best way to keep our family member, our history, and our culture alive. Our language fades alway, none of my grandchildren speak Italian, the connection to the homeland fades, but as long as we past down the recipes and the secrets of how we cook them we will still be alive. This idea of holding onto our recipes is wrong, we need to share them with every family member.
Those words echo in me at least once a week when I cook. There are recipes my wife still talks about that her grandmother made that I watched my late father in law try to recreate because his mother never shared them, and now after his passing (way to young) there are recipes and his special dishes I wish I could make for my wife and even my mother in law, and can't. I hope just one of my dishes or recipes makes it to into the next generations. I love the art of cooking, I love taking care of people through feeding them, and I believe it is one way to show my love to those people.
I love the spirit of bbq, because it is one of here are all my secrets now go recreate and create new. I hope I also can do that with my kids. I love seeing the joy and art of cooking collide with the joy and art of parenting, great post!
