Dad jacket + fanny pack + dogs + dog jackets I am dying. dead.
ramina+82
Okay guys, dadlunch poll. What are your dads eating these days?
My dad told me that he took the leftover fried rice from dinner the night before, but added the leftover roast pork, and then some old veggies, and MORE rice, “and there was just so much, and I couldn’t possibly have eaten it all, but then I did.” There were green onions on it. I’m proud of you Dad, that’s some A++ dadfood.
SwitchingGenres+21
My dad eats spaghetti with tomato sauce a lot. He also enjoys eating at buffets. I believe those are his main food groups, augmented with M&Ms.
Frumiosa+13
Anybody else’s dad mix everything together on his plate at every meal and inexplicably put olives in everything?
Mrs_Peel+32
My grandfather mixes all the leftovers from the fridge together and calls it “Oatman”, after an old Army buddy of his. (Who I assume did the same thing).
Fluffernutter+7
Haha my dad does the mixing together thing and my mom dubbed him, “Bucketman.” I think after that Monty Python sketch: “Everything in a bucket with an egg on top”? Dad even devised and drew up a little Bucketman cartoon character. So gross.
loren_smith+9
Yes, but with pickled jalapeno slices
ecurve+8
Holy shit, are you me? My dad loves olives with the burning intensity of at least a dozen suns.
RuncibleSpoon+12
gah my dad just loves technically healthy things mixed together in a terrifying mash. and always olives.
his unsupervised lunches make me suspect he has no tastebuds or just maybe very different ones. or maybe this is just his love of efficiency at the most logical extreme?
beecaveroad+6
Yes!! This is my dad’s classic move. There’s a sandwich place in my town that lets you design your own crazy sandwich… he may have combined barbecue shrimp and olives. Awful.
Mrs_Peel+8
Canned soup, every day. (At least for lunch).
clarestainthorp+1
This is my Dad 100% – he would happily live on canned soup if left unsupervised.
hmbmelly+33
“Sandwich” made of wheat bread and one of those little cans of tomato paste. Maybe some cottage cheese with sugar on it. He’s a monster.
Fluffernutter+12
Oh…. Oh no… that’s just…. wow…
Mrs_Peel+4
I have actually heard of tomato paste sandwiches before– I assume it’s some kind of Depression/ WWII rationing holdover.
hmbmelly+2
JUST THE PLAIN STUFF. WE’RE VERY BLAND HERE IN IOWA.
gripyfish+17
Since I live on the opposite side of the country, I haven’t been able to make any recent observations, but I’d imagine my dad (after ‘a brisk walk’ since his office isn’t that far from his house) still has lunches of either leftover steak, his own version of tuna salad (the secret ingredient is curry powder), or pepperoni and cheese slices.
Other dad lunchtime activities include: checking to see if the mail has arrived/being put out if the mail isn’t there yet; checking Ebay for deals; listening to AM radio/Fox News at a loud volume.
littlehuntingcreek+64
“We need to eat this for lunch before it goes bad”
Dads make food sound so appetizing
BobbieWickham+12
Leftover taco meat (cold! fresh out the fridge! not microwaved or anything!) on a hot dog bun with mustard.
This can, I think, be partially attributed to his childhood in the midwest, where his family ate at Maid-Rite occasionally.
BobbieWickham+8
or an egg sandwich, which is eggs scrambled with onions and bacon grease until they’re a homogenous brown mass, then piled on whole wheat toast.
winterbymorning+6
When I was about 10 I went through a phase of eating white onions and mayo on Saltines. I also put mayo on popcorn. have no idea why.
bibliophibian+9
I’d eat that.
sagerenee+1
Husband is already embracing this bit of dadness. Also Macaroni and cheese on a hamburger bun….I…I just don’t get him sometimes…
headfullofhoney+16
My dad just discovered quinoa!
catoclock+23
My dad refuses to eat quinoa because “it looks like fish eyes.”
Mrs_Peel+2
He’s not wrong…
ppyajunebug+10
My dad is back on the no carb thing since “your mother says I’m getting chubby again.” So it’s a lot of meat and salads these days.
winterbymorning+31
My dad lives in Switzerland now, so he eats a lot of cheese and sausages. I noticed over Christmas that his main food groups were roast chestnuts and mulled wine, which is as it should be.
He saw a nutritionist for a while, a few years ago, and he took her advice as gospel. She said something about a good snack being 8 raw almonds; after that, if he put his hand in the bag of almonds and pulled out 9, he would drop one back in. (But he still bought them in bulk at Costco even though it took him months to get through a single bag, because hey, he’s a Dad.) He wouldn’t eat carrots because they allegedly contain too much sugar. He lost a lot of weight, but god, at what cost?
Battle_Swine+32
I’ve seen this kind of thing before. “If you’re hungry, eat 8 almonds or 5 walnuts!” Which, no. That’s maybe a precursor to a snack, at best.
ArsenioB_Ham+97
That’s the food you eat while you’re looking through the cabinets trying to find a better snack.
v_d_budenmayer+14
I am honestly not sure my dad remembers to eat lunch on 95% of days. It is extremely difficult for me to imagine him determining that it is time to eat lunch if someone else is not there to feel hungry and remind him that he does, too.
blunderbusst+45
Regardless of what she’s eating, my dad loves to tell me, in detail, everything she’s eaten on any given day. “So I took one of those pasta nest things, and I boiled it up, and then I mixed it with some of the heart healthy fake butter stuff, and I made some steamed broccoli and mixed that in there with come chopped up garlic, you know the kind that comes in the big jar at Costco,” and so ad infinitum until pretty much I have died, standing there, listening to her tell me about how good salmon is with garlic and broccoli and noodles.
I KNOW, DAD, YOU’VE EATEN THAT FOR DINNER EVERY DAY FOR FIVE YEARS.
alicia+22
Dads are natural teachers though, and how else could she make sure you are well informed about the ease and deliciousness of the perfect evening meal? What if you FORGOT?
Frumiosa+9
You can take the woman out of the dad but you can’t take the dad out of the woman?
blunderbusst+23
Hahahaha: DIRTY!
And, I think it’s the other way around? My dad came out as trans last month. Being a lady (and a freaking WIZARD of accessorizing) has not muted her dad-like characteristics AT ALL.
So, you can take the man out of the dad, but you can’t take the dad out of the woman?
Yep, still dirty. 😉
blunderbusst+8
(Also, sorry for transplaining there — I couldn’t remember if you were one of the people who was on board my “Hey my dad’s a lady!” thread in last month’s Dad Magazine post.)
Frumiosa+7
Lol “transplaining” 🙂 Yep, I was on that thread. I was trying to say you can take the woman out, as in “reveal the woman,” whatever silly joke. My point is that, yes, it seems like she’s still very much your dad.
Also, you’re so right. Now I just get to hear endless stories about picking out shoes and jewelry. “I think it was a Wednesday, no, it must’ve been a Tuesday, I was wearing my white huarache sandals…”
OliviaPJones+5
I am still figuring out how to interact with my dad but I suspect that this is a bonding ritual that involves you exclaiming over the brilliance of buying garlic in a big jar from Costco. Perhaps followed by another conversation wherein you tell your dad in great detail about the meal you made and “do you know, I used some of that garlic from Costco!”
Just a guess, though. Dads are a strange species and I am prone to misinterpret their wishes and intentions.
blunderbusst+2
Hahahahahahaha. YES.
octopoda+13
My dad only eats one meal a day, in the evenings, and then some snacks later (he is retired and on a weird late night schedule as I would be if I were retired). He also reads the Toast so he may see this.
msjinxie+20
{Hi, Octodad!}
Mrs_Peel+7
I can’t *wait* until I’m retired and can keep whatever weird schedule I want!
queen_bunnie+25
The breakfast of dad champions: kimchi on cream cheese on those wasa cracker things.
Kai_Ko+9
That sounds delicious! Your dad knows what’s up.
queen_bunnie+12
I told him about this and he goes “see I told your mom! I’m a hip dad!” he was thrilled
OliviaPJones+19
I think that between my spouse and I, I’m the dad because that sounds amazing. Also, I put hot sauce on everything. “Does it need hot sauce? A panel of dads weighed in and said probably, yes.”
queen_bunnie+12
5 out of 5 dads agree: you should definitely buy the hot sauce with the most warnings on it and subject your family to it
Thujaplicata+12
My dad is a big fan of taking whatever leftovers there are from the night before and frying them up with eggs in the morning. Spaghetti, stir fry, just plain rice, doesn’t matter.
GruntledDave+14
Bonus points for alleging to anyone who will listen that you are making a frittata
tanaise+12
My granddad–who was a TOTAL Dad–would say “You can have it with milk and sugar for breakfast” about dinner leftovers.
elsajeni+14
Whatever it is, he will a) mix it all together and then b) spend the next hour complaining that he ate too much of it, with much theatrical groaning.
mrtafadhali+14
My dad won’t eat when he is alone, so I believe his typical lunch plans are to call me halfway through my dinner to say “I’m STARVING, all I had today was a kale smoothie, why don’t I take you out to dinner?”
logicbutton+40
I have no idea what my dad’s eating for lunch now that he’s retired, but while he was working he ate a tuna sandwich with lettuce every single day for over 40 years. My mom used to make it for him and then put the empty can on the floor for our cat to push all around the kitchen with his nose.
Several years ago, my mom’s side of the family did a gift card exchange for Christmas. I got B&N, my mom got Starbucks, my brother got Best Buy, and my dad got Target. On the way home, he said, “We all ended up with good ones – you like books, your brother likes music, Mom likes coffee, and I love tuna!”
deleted7410012+5
avocados, always, all the avocados. black salty liquorice. and scalding hot instant coffee that is more caffeine-delivery-system than actual coffee.
deleted7410012+36
dads and food, though. my mom likes to tell me the story of when they were on their honeymoon, and my dad was starving and had the hunger-rage. he saw a bakery across a busy street, and was like, GIMME THAT CROISSANT and actually walked into traffic (insane french traffic, no less) to get to the bakery, leaving my mom to burst into tears on the sidewalk, thinking that her new husband was going to die in a traffic accident all because he wanted some baked goods.
SarahDances+9
The one thing my dad pretty much always makes when alone in the house is chipped beef. He knows how to make other things; he just doesn’t. Of course, now that he has a fancy pellet grill, he’s been experimenting with things like making his own beef jerky and pastrami. He was super excited about the meat slicer my mom got him for the holidays, because now when the deli guy asks him if he wants the meat sliced, he can just say “Give it to me whole! I can slice it later if I need to,” instead of calling my mom to ask.
bibliowrecka+4
This isn’t necessarily a lunch-time thing for him, but my dad will slice up a raw potato or some raw red cabbage, salt the hell out of them, and then crunch away. He doesn’t like cooked potatoes or cabbage, though.
tinypaperme+12
My dad makes epic salads that need a bowl the size of a large movie theatre popcorn bucket and are delicious. These salads are a work of art and every time I go home to visit he must make me at least three.
grevgrevgrev+15
Does anyone else’s dad make omelettes out of literally anything? I once had three bites left of fajita meat & veggies that I couldn’t finish, and he took it home and made an omelette out of it the next morning. He did the same with some sesame chicken from the Chinese takeout place.
betterpast+1
this! my dad is an omelet master.
his other main food group is starbucks. we went fishing once and he made two cups at home, then stopped at his shop on the way and got a hot and an iced coffee to go so he wouldn’t run out.
tragicallyludicrous+5
I don’t know what he eats for lunch: my dad isn’t the kind of dad who goes into this very much. (I guess he gets Chipotle sometimes?) I do, however, know what my dad eats for snacks: any kind of jarred herring, pickled green tomatoes, and then he pretends he doesn’t have any dessert but actually eats like 3-4 Milano cookies.
He also appreciates all varieties of sausage. This is a favorite part of traveling for my dad, trying the local sausage specialities.
ughanothername+5
Recently my dad’s fallen off the bandwagon so he’s eating at the cafeteria in his building, where the food’s really bad and the women gives him way more than everyone else because she thinks he’s cute. BUT based on our phone call the other night, he really needs to start bringing salads to work again. IIRC from the last time he did this regularly, he buys one of those gigantic spring mix boxes from Costo and splits that up into servings. Then he alternates between adding canned salmon and canned tuna to the salads. There’s way more to this salad process but I’ve forgotten, even though he’s explained it in detail to me many times.
Dorothea_Brooke+4
My dad will combine/heat up whatever leftovers he can find and then add the most crucial ingredient: APPLESAUCE. He eats applesauce with EVERYTHING. He has been doing this for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I have asked when and how the applesauce thing began, but he can’t remember. My mom got so mad at him for always using any old dirtied spoon in the applesauce jar (leaving mystery gobs floating in there), that he now just turns it upside down and blobs it onto his plate. He then swirls it in with whatever other foods are in proximity, from chicken in gravy to lasagna. None of us get it.
leahrobinn+3
My dad’s lunch is, and always has been. ‘bits and pieces’.
This is a plate of small salady things laid out flat in one layer. Usual culprits: plain cheese sliced into small rectangles, tinned beetroot, a smattering of lettuce, two or three olives, a gherkin. Optional: three-day-old leftovers of anything.
For lunch-dessert, it is always one slice of two-day-old bread, preferably the end of the loaf, buttered and cut in half, first half eaten, second half additionally spread with peanut butter and then eaten as well.
revengeofpompom+185
I feel like ASSERTIVENESS!! must be an article about how if you just dress nicely and spend all day going from business to business with your resume and a solid pitch, you will have 10 job offers by the end of the day.
dessertwithoutcheese+8
NAILED IT
BobbieWickham+49
gotta POUND THE PAVEMENT.
GreenGrasses+117
I was SO RELIEVED when I was talking with my Dad and he asked about my job search and he said “I haven’t been on the job market in 20 years, I’m sorry I can’t offer any advice.” Oh Dad, if only you knew! Your refusal to offer advice is a gentle balm on the wounds caused by all those old people who think we just need to call up a few places and ask if they’re hiring.
irishbreakfasttime+33
My dad was absolutely That Dad for years, although he hadn’t been on the job market since before I was born. Now I work in a smallish field he doesn’t entirely understand, so I can sense him getting all revved up to offer advice, pausing, and saying “Well, you’ll find something eventually.” It’s very nice.
My partner’s family in Houston is pretty sure the solution to job hunting woes is “move to Houston.”
GruntledDave+8
With oil at $50/barrel, not many people in town are hiring. Even with an economy more diverse than in the past, having the oil & gas sector take a sharp downturn has had a pretty notable effect.
BUT our restaurants are dope and our Toast meetup group is fab!
queen_bunnie+14
SAME called to ask for help on my first interview and he was like well I’ve only had to interview really once? Ask your mother?
drladybusiness+9
Oh god bless his heart.
Ethylbenzene+4
GAHHH YES
RuncibleSpoon+36
my ex’s father kept pressuring me to march into the fancy academic program i wanted to work at with a tray of homemade brownies and ask why i hadn’t heard back yet on my application.
that i never heard back was proof to him that it was my fault for not following this advice.
meanchelled+46
YES, my dad’s also in the cult of leftovers, combining everything for lunch to make sure there’s room in the fridge… for more leftovers. thanks to dad i get huffy about going out for A Nice Lunch because surely there’s some old food somewhere that needs to be eaten??? what if it gets lonely
meanchelled+66
every month i get a little sad that i can’t actually read all these articles
I MEAN, DOGWEAR. i don’t have dogs but i feel like i need the DAD PERSPECTIVE on which dog vests are best for winter???
Household_Opera+13
And don’t forget the little dog boots that keep their paws from getting irritated by road salt.
deleted182847+5
Yesterday I was checking the dates and thinking “YEP! WHERE is Dad magazine???”
sausagedog+37
My dad got himself a refurbished Vitamix for Christmas, so he’s gotten on the green smoothie train. (“You put in a whole bag of kale… and it blends down to nothing!”) Also the turmeric train. And it’s still a bit early, but once his tomato plants start producing, I’m sure he’ll be back on the “lycopene!” train.
Dads love lycopene.
(ETA: in response to the dadlunch poll, but also just general dadness I guess)
ramina+12
THEY DO, HOLY SHIT, THIS IS A UNIVERSAL TRUTH. My dad has an incredible vegetable garden, but the star are always the tomatoes, and as soon as I read the word “lycopene” on the ketchup bottle, he has LATCHED ONTO IT.
I think it’s a ketchup-based conspiracy.
RuncibleSpoon+7
my dad has had a long and affectionate fight with my mother over whether his tomatoes are fruit or vegetable.
he says fruit and she says veg, both with passion and conviction. she’s really the gardener but he’s the science-y factoid one (i take after him). i refuse to get drawn in anymore 🙂
MilesofMountain+27
What’s the saying about that? “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing you shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad.” So, they’re both kind of right?
mrtafadhali+7
My dad LOVES green smoothies, and every time I’m over there in the morning he offers me some as if today I am going to decide I want cold, blended kale. (I mean, I love kale, but I don’t even drink fruit smoothies unless I’m somewhere with more than one Jamba Juice in a 300 mile radius, I’m really fine with chewing my food myself.)
GruntledDave+27
the daddest part of this is that the Vitamix is refurbished. So dad.
beecaveroad+7
Dad nutrition: growing at the rate of one NyTimes article their high school friend posted on Facebook per year
Beakses+12
My food scientist father-in-law will still go off on rants about how the food company he was working for at the time wouldn’t let him push the lycopene angle on tomato products back in the day (he would have been a lycopene pioneer! he tells us). He was also eating very precise amounts of blueberries (blackberries?) and walnuts because of some specific micronutrient there for a while. Basically, his additional food knowledge has allowed him to reach peak dad food habits well ahead of other dads. Or something.
ksek+106
A few weeks ago, my father-in-law gave my husband an issue of a personal finance magazine… and I think it might just be the real life Dad Magazine. I don’t have it handy, but the cover stories were things like “To Retire… or Not?!” and “Things to Consider Before Buying that Boat”.
irishbreakfasttime+26
My dad gets Model Railroader magazine and this other one, I forget the name but it sounds like Country Living, but it’s not Country Living, it’s Dad Country Living. So, so many headlines about storage solutions and tinkering between the two of them.
tinypaperme+12
My dad gets Consumer Reports and has since the 70s.
rusty_spatula+9
A blog I read occasionally features irritated criticisms of the methodologies Consumer Reports used in recent issues (e.g. those special AA batteries calibrated for electronics http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2015/02/rating-batte… which always carries the implicit dad-gripe “CR has really fallen off since the 70s.”
ughanothername+2
Thank you for the link. As a long-time consumer reports subscriber, my dad will be very interested in seeing this. I’ll have to send it along immediately.
tanaise+4
For his birthday one year, I got my brother (who is actually a father, but not *yet* fully Dad) a subscription to Guns and Gardens, a southern lifestyle magazine. It is apparently as insane/awesome as it sounds.
MsPiggleWiggles+13
My favorite magazine for the southern dad, Guns and Gardens. Covering the fundamentals.
tenyaluna+2
I didn’t even know this was a thing and this now may be the Father’s Day gift I was looking for.
ksek+1
I got my boss a subscription to that as a Christmas gift a few years back. He is a definite dad.
raqueue+17
My apartment is filled with magazines with headlines such as “228 Storage Tips and Easy Projects,” “Get perfectly smooth walls and ceilings” “Win the war on weeds” for illustrious publications like Pro Secrets for DIY.
My childless husband is a Dad-in-training
ArsenioB_Ham+16
…I subscribe to “This Old House” magazine but only because I love the show so much (because of all the surrogate Dads WITH BOSTON ACCENTS on it)!
beatricks+44
I read the other day that Julia Louis-Dreyfuss received a text from Joe Biden after he saw her on the cover of the Amtrak magazine. Dad Magazines in the wild.
grevgrevgrev+26
I LOVE HOW MUCH JOE BIDEN LOVES TRAINS
beatricks+22
He is like a surrogate Dad to this whole great nation.
Mrs_Peel+8
He’s like a human Ayn Rand.
grevgrevgrev+9
Now I want to read “Joe Biden’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It would have approximately 300% more King’s Cross/Hogwarts Express rhapsodizing in it, for sure.
loren_smith+49
I went to some friends’ of my parents with my dad last week. It was a casual buffet thing, and when he couldn’t find a knife in the cutlery, my dad used his Swiss Army knife to eat his dinner. Dads!
winterbymorning+96
Receipts From The Hardware Store: How Long Should You Keep Them?
(Answer: forever, because you never know!)
queen_bunnie+14
It’s important to buy those plastic receipt holders from staples or costco in excess so when you keep all your receipts forever, you can keep them organized too.
BestLaidPlans+22
I listen to a morning radio show where, one a month, they make the one guy pull out his wallet and they go through his receipts to discuss whether or not he’s crazy for saving each one. He kept saving gas receipts “in case he got a bad batch.”
Frumiosa+20
My husband always gets a gas receipt because OTHERWISE THEY’LL OVERCHARGE YOU. We should start a DadMag quarterly insert for Husband-Dads.
BestLaidPlans+1
Does he keep them for a while or do they get thrown away at the pump?
Alli525+10
My mom got gas receipts just so she could reset her mileage since the last fillup and do what I as a child viewed as very complicated math (long division???) to determine how efficient her car was. I remember just begging her to turn on the car for the heat or A/C while she was doing that math, which worked some of the time. Why she didn’t have a calculator in the car when she did it EVERY SINGLE TIME is beyond me.
projectbeks+4
My dad did this, too! Oh thank god I thought I was the only one who suffered (not silently) in the hot or freezing car during this ritual!
secondursula+4
My husband does this too! He has a little notebook in the glove compartment.
ecurve+5
My dad is a huge believer in the Gas Notebook. He goes back and does the math and writes in the gas mileage, too. He’s made me one for each new car, helpfully labeled with my name and the car make/model. Then, some months back, I showed him Gas Cubby, a gas notebook app in which I’d been keeping track of fill-ups.
He didn’t actually tear up with pride, but I think he wanted to.
You can throw it out when you fill up again, though, so you don’t need to hold onto them forever.
PotterPotterson+3
O_O was my face the entire time reading that article.
sausagedog+17
Receipts From The Hardware Store Pt. 2: Mailing Them In For Rebates!
ppyajunebug+36
DOGWEAR. My dad would be ALL OVER that shit. He has been absolutely ridiculous since he and my mom got a new puppy last year. He’ll give me detailed reports on what my “sister” did that day and it always takes me a minute to recall that it wasn’t my human little sister who was playing in the dog park and going for five mile walks with them. He also cradles her like a princess and sings to her, but that’s nothing new.
tragicallyludicrous+8
My parents are SO INTO the dog now that every kid has left the house/state. It is all about the dog. I get many updates on what she’s up to (from both parents).
hungrybee+27
Gendered dogwear, even! When I was a girl, my dad never bought me a single pink thing, but his darling 2 year-old pup most certainly has a pink collar now!
bibliophibian+10
I assumed ASSERTIVENESS! was an article about dog stuff like Cesar Millan’s whole “pack leader” thing.
speakingofcake+57
I always enjoy the comments on Dad Magazine posts. It makes me happy to hear about other people’s nice dads, even though it also makes me sad that I very much do not have a Nice Dad. But it’s reassuring that they exist, being sweet and funny and kind to their adult children. Go (other people’s) Dads!
Claudia+14
Same here. There’s probably a german word for this, right?
drladybusiness+100
Dädenfreude
mbculver+9
My dad passed away 20 months ago, but I still love Dad Magazine and all the attendant comments. Maybe that would be Dädentotenfreude?
(Miss you, Dad.)
deleted182847+7
“I’m in you, more so when they put me in the ground.” That song’s about having a bitter history but the line is still true. My dad died when I was not quite 24. He was only 50, but he’d put on SO much mileage with smoking and drinking. We weren’t terribly close just because of our similarities. If there wasn’t anything to say why start talking? We both kinda have conversational inertia–both rest and motion.
Then the last time we went to Disney World together we’re in line for Space Mountain and he’s telling me about The Pretender. Apparently he loved that show. “Wow, JP’s geeking out here.” I’d been telling him, the Hungarian self-styled redneck from Detroit, about “insurgent country” or whatever you’d call that mid-90s stuff–Old 97s, BR-549, Freakwater and playing him Jonathan Richman’s “I, Jonathan” on the drive down. “This is GOOD.” (because he never dropped his mid-60s fandom, it just resided next to Bocephus later in life)
I brought the Neil Diamond box set too, He’d been really jazzed when I told him my friend and I were seeing him the previous December.
Then he dies and we’re going through his stuff and there’s this Boris Vallejo-decorated dagger and a fucking “Highlander” katana. “He was a fanboy!”
“My boy was just like me…” (which also includes being ridiculous, not that tall in the end, still really excited about riding Peter Pan’s Flight, not eating breakfast enough)
knittingBAMF+9
Also.
I read the comments here and pretend all of them are talking about My Dad.
tenyaluna+7
My dad became the stand-in Dad for like 8 extra neighborhood kids due to a combination of their dads’ absenteeism/deployment/just not niceness and he just went with it. One of said kids even still goes with us on family vacations. Nice Dads don’t really mind if a kid is not officially their kid, they would still be happy to tell them all about whether raising your own chickens results in cheaper eggs or about that time the dog really got into the trash or whether a riding mower is worth the investment (ALWAYS).
Laura+17
What is it with dads and dogs? My dad hasn’t had a dog for about 30 years; if you tried to talk him into getting a dog, he would say no. But my husband and I got a dog and now it’s the first thing he asks about when I call. “How’s the dog?”
And I genuinely had no idea that weird lunches were a generalized Dad behavior. When I want to tease my dad about questionable taste I say “Sure, but you’re the kind of person who will eat lima beans and Spam at the same meal, on purpose.” Because it’s TRUE.
lesliejroot+14
My dad is the same way! He installed and figured out how to work Google Hangouts just so he could video-call us and admire his granddog. My parents went to visit my brother a few weeks ago and the first thing my dad reported on was what my brother’s dogs are like (not as good as my dog, obviously).
clairebm+2
So true! My Dad refused to get another dog (even though Mum would love one) after my childhood labrador died about 10 years ago, and pretends to be all gruff about dogs, but after my lab had a major operation a couple of months ago, he came over to babysit him for a day so my husband and I could go to work, and called me more than once over that week just to ask about my dog. Dad also spent a good portion of his last visit saying what a gorgeous dog Major is! The dog gruffness is definitely all feigned.
queen_bunnie+57
“DOGWEAR”
my dad tried to name me after his dog
I’m his first born
hungrybee+27
That’s a sign of true love. He knew you’d be his new *human* best friend!
deleted182847+6
Dad Logic
BestLaidPlans+15
I’m almost positive my grandmother told me they picked my dad’s name because, while she was pregnant, they just called the future baby my grandfather’s dog’s name. When he was born, they couldn’t think of anything else better, so they stuck with the dog’s name for their ONLY child.
I don’t think I could have made that story up in my head, could I?
tanaise+2
My cousin has the same name (ish–Ross vs Rosco) as one of my grandfather’s favorite dogs. I’m 95% sure this is not a coincidence.
However, girls named Molly are just out of luck, apparently–everyone will tell them a story about a dog/friend’s dog/dog they once met named Molly.
GruntledDave+21
Is your dad Sean Connery in an Indiana Jones movie? “We named the dog Indiana.”
queen_bunnie+30
it’s possible he thinks he is
before I went on study abroad my dad and I were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table and he was acting kind of strangely and finally he looks me in the eye and goes “have you seen taken?”
GruntledDave+16
It may be my own dad-ness, but that made me mist up.
Also, the implied dad-badassery there is next-level epic.
merrillworks+4
I would name a child of either gender after my male dog and canine lifemate. They should be so lucky.
floridagal1+8
ME TOO. Dad: Let’s name her Betsy that’s a cute name! Mom: That’s the dog’s name. You aren’t naming the baby after the dog. Dad: Well change the dog’s name, it doesn’t know its name anyway.
They did not end up naming me after the dog.
queen_bunnie+4
that is delightful
my dad’s dog was named domino…
isabelcooper+6
Mine wanted to, and I think was only thwarted by my gender and that there’s no way to make “Zeke” a girl’s name.
And then he wanted “Bathsheba”. My grandmother had to intervene.
dancingcrowdesigns+5
True story: a friend and his wife got a puppy while she was pregnant so he could name the puppy Frodo and thus the child could NOT be named Frodo. After ruling out vast swathes of Tolkein names, they settled on a Zelazny prince instead. Not Random – that was the first choice, after Frodo and Gandalf.
lesliejroot+53
Regarding dogwear, I have a little treat pouch/poop bag dispenser combo that clips to my pants, and though I am a childless woman, it makes me feel like a dad. Recently at the dog park an Actual Dad approached me to tell me that he liked my treat pouch, which was confusing until I realized that he was making a joke because he has the same one. I felt affirmed.
squishycatmew+37
Oh god, I love Dad Magazine so much but it always reminds me of how Not A Dad my father is in many ways – he’s kept up with current music (though not much Pop), he’s usually more up on technological trends than I am (he was a journalist covering tech and tech policy for 30 years before moving into PR), he gives zero fucks about Dadly Sports or lawn car, he never sends me texts worrying about whether I’ve done some sort of household/seasonal maintenance thing, etc.
On the other hand, he tells literally everyone he meets about me and how proud of me he is, even back when I wasn’t doing much to be proud of, he make terrible, terrible puns ALL THE TIME, he gave me a tool set and an impact driver when I moved out (he also cried), and he is a local history buff to the point of not only leading free tours on cultural/architectural history around the city through a group out of the public library, he actually is now on their board and originated at least one tour himself. Also our father-daughter bonding time is that we both work two film festivals together, a silent film fest and a film noir fest, and he has HISTORICALLY ACCURATE OUTFITS FOR BOTH OF THEM.
Mrs_Peel+8
I <3 your dad.
Also, I <3 silent film and am very curious which one you work at. My significant other is a silent film accompanist. (He wears a three-piece suit and a pocket watch while he’s working, but those are just his normal clothes…)
squishycatmew+5
SFSFF! I recently got promoted from “volunteer who can be trusted to do pretty much anything” to “unpaid staff because as the festival got bigger they had to put more restrictions on volunteers, but those basically didn’t apply to me because of my history and I noted the issues it was causing with some other volunteers and straight-up said “you need to either treat me like the rest of the volunteers or make me staff” and they fucking field-promoted me and slapped a headset on me to boot” to “paid Stage Manager despite not having done anything remotely like it since, like, middle school theatre camp”.
I have to say, I always admired our performers, but as SM I have nothing but love for them – they are multitalented and superbly professional as well as kind, and the one guy who was getting to be awful was dropped off the roster before I ever had to deal with him directly. Our presenters, not so much, necessarily…*
*edit just in case this comes up in someone’s Google search – our presenters are all extremely knowledgeable and often experts on the film/director/star/era etc., and many of them simply have no or little experience a) addressing an entire house (with balcony), b) using a microphone with or without podium, and c) actually having to time their speeches, and d) I have very little time to prep them beforehand as we do not really have a functioning green room. So while it may be frustrating for me it is also probably frustrating for them.
Household_Opera+5
Your dad sounds a lot like my dad. Not exactly the Dad Magazine demographic, but: proud of me to the point of recounting news about me to all his friends, loved terrible puns, was very fond of history (though he was more of a “sign up for popular-history-book-of-the-month clubs” person than a local history person), and our father-daughter bonding time involved a lot of trips to museums when I was growing up. I miss him a whole lot. But these Dad Magazine threads always remind me of him in a good way.
tragicallyludicrous+4
Individual dads are often Dads in some way and not in others – my dad is very much not a Dad on many things (very into clothing, doesn’t fix things/know anything about tools, not really a pun person), but sometimes very much a Dad on other things (barbecuing, the dog, THE WEATHER). It’s a range!
deleted7410012+29
dads n dogs.
my dad loves dogs but hasn’t had a dog since before he and mom got married. sometimes on the weekends they specifically go to nice downtown strolling neighborhoods so he can say hello to all the dogs outside the coffee shops.
hawthorn_tree+6
Okay but is it the Italian seasonings tomato paste? Because that is delicious, although I eat it with a spoon and pieces of mozzarella instead of on a sandwich.
Lapremierefemme+5
Your Dad and my Dad are twins, separated at birth.
deleted182847+20
Thank you Jaya, Matt and Dog Dad. I was starting to get angry about angry people over at Jezebel at the Roundup page. Dad Magazine’s here to put a hand on my shoulder like the Rooster. “When shit gets you down, just say ‘fuck it!’ and get yourself some terriers in the snow!”
ramina+50
Y’ALL. ACTUAL DAD EMAIL ABOUT ACTUAL DAD FOOD:
E,
Last night I finished your tres leche ice cream. Today I replaced it. On sale for $2.88/pt. upon checkout we received a coupon for $1 off two haagen das pints. You may want to use it this weekend while HD is still on sale. BTW, I bought pastrami. I will have it on rye, you might want to pick up a decent hard roll if you want some.
HD is one sale until Saturday.
D
clairebm+10
That is awesome! My mum likes to sign off her emails to me as M, and I can’t tell if it stands for Mum or for her first name, which also starts with M…it feels very James Bond though, makes me laugh!
deleted182847+3
Are you ready for duty then?
deleted182847+8
That also reminds me of Dominic Monaghan talking about Viggo Mortensen telling everyone about the salmon that should be easy to catch at the camping site they made during the shooting of the Orc chase for “The Two Towers”. “You should catch some fish in a few minutes.”
And the Indian scale double actor then scolded Viggo and ordered him around the kitchen.
I’m saying 1. I love the Lord Of The Rings dvd appendices and 2. Dads! (Viggo is one)
Servo Academy
Are you ready for duty then?
Servo Academy
That also reminds me of Dominic Monaghan talking about Viggo Mortensen telling everyone about the salmon that should be easy to catch at the camping site they made during the shooting of the Orc chase for "The Two Towers". "You should catch some fish in a few minutes."
And the Indian scale double actor then scolded Viggo and ordered him around the kitchen.
I'm saying 1. I love the Lord Of The Rings dvd appendices and 2. Dads! (Viggo is one)
tploomis+1
Doggone it! I have to have a subscription!
tploomis+3
I can’t wait for the article on how to consolidate your remotes!
fromthelandwithlove
My father is only allowed to cook on the grill. Because when he cooks in the kitchen, he favors baked chicken breasts with barbecue sauce (which does not caramelize and is therefore awful) and boiling vegetables into oblivion. He once boiled a whole batch of brussels sprouts I was planning to roast; I still haven't quite forgiven him.
Georgie+1
Eagerly awaiting Dad Magazine’s article on cleaning the gutters. It’s a nice Sunday in Iowa? Dad’s cleaning the gutters! “They get full of leaves and start to smell and there’s no drainage. Gotta do it!”
LeftyLibrarian
What's stopping you?!?!!?!? I also like to add chocolate chips to my fluffernutter, because I have an unhealthy addiction to sugar.
Dad jacket + fanny pack + dogs + dog jackets I am dying. dead.
Okay guys, dadlunch poll. What are your dads eating these days?
My dad told me that he took the leftover fried rice from dinner the night before, but added the leftover roast pork, and then some old veggies, and MORE rice, “and there was just so much, and I couldn’t possibly have eaten it all, but then I did.” There were green onions on it. I’m proud of you Dad, that’s some A++ dadfood.
My dad eats spaghetti with tomato sauce a lot. He also enjoys eating at buffets. I believe those are his main food groups, augmented with M&Ms.
Anybody else’s dad mix everything together on his plate at every meal and inexplicably put olives in everything?
My grandfather mixes all the leftovers from the fridge together and calls it “Oatman”, after an old Army buddy of his. (Who I assume did the same thing).
Haha my dad does the mixing together thing and my mom dubbed him, “Bucketman.” I think after that Monty Python sketch: “Everything in a bucket with an egg on top”? Dad even devised and drew up a little Bucketman cartoon character. So gross.
Yes, but with pickled jalapeno slices
Holy shit, are you me? My dad loves olives with the burning intensity of at least a dozen suns.
gah my dad just loves technically healthy things mixed together in a terrifying mash. and always olives.
his unsupervised lunches make me suspect he has no tastebuds or just maybe very different ones. or maybe this is just his love of efficiency at the most logical extreme?
Yes!! This is my dad’s classic move. There’s a sandwich place in my town that lets you design your own crazy sandwich… he may have combined barbecue shrimp and olives. Awful.
Canned soup, every day. (At least for lunch).
This is my Dad 100% – he would happily live on canned soup if left unsupervised.
“Sandwich” made of wheat bread and one of those little cans of tomato paste. Maybe some cottage cheese with sugar on it. He’s a monster.
Oh…. Oh no… that’s just…. wow…
I have actually heard of tomato paste sandwiches before– I assume it’s some kind of Depression/ WWII rationing holdover.
JUST THE PLAIN STUFF. WE’RE VERY BLAND HERE IN IOWA.
Since I live on the opposite side of the country, I haven’t been able to make any recent observations, but I’d imagine my dad (after ‘a brisk walk’ since his office isn’t that far from his house) still has lunches of either leftover steak, his own version of tuna salad (the secret ingredient is curry powder), or pepperoni and cheese slices.
Other dad lunchtime activities include: checking to see if the mail has arrived/being put out if the mail isn’t there yet; checking Ebay for deals; listening to AM radio/Fox News at a loud volume.
“We need to eat this for lunch before it goes bad”
Dads make food sound so appetizing
Leftover taco meat (cold! fresh out the fridge! not microwaved or anything!) on a hot dog bun with mustard.
This can, I think, be partially attributed to his childhood in the midwest, where his family ate at Maid-Rite occasionally.
or an egg sandwich, which is eggs scrambled with onions and bacon grease until they’re a homogenous brown mass, then piled on whole wheat toast.
When I was about 10 I went through a phase of eating white onions and mayo on Saltines. I also put mayo on popcorn. have no idea why.
I’d eat that.
Husband is already embracing this bit of dadness. Also Macaroni and cheese on a hamburger bun….I…I just don’t get him sometimes…
My dad just discovered quinoa!
My dad refuses to eat quinoa because “it looks like fish eyes.”
He’s not wrong…
My dad is back on the no carb thing since “your mother says I’m getting chubby again.” So it’s a lot of meat and salads these days.
My dad lives in Switzerland now, so he eats a lot of cheese and sausages. I noticed over Christmas that his main food groups were roast chestnuts and mulled wine, which is as it should be.
He saw a nutritionist for a while, a few years ago, and he took her advice as gospel. She said something about a good snack being 8 raw almonds; after that, if he put his hand in the bag of almonds and pulled out 9, he would drop one back in. (But he still bought them in bulk at Costco even though it took him months to get through a single bag, because hey, he’s a Dad.) He wouldn’t eat carrots because they allegedly contain too much sugar. He lost a lot of weight, but god, at what cost?
I’ve seen this kind of thing before. “If you’re hungry, eat 8 almonds or 5 walnuts!” Which, no. That’s maybe a precursor to a snack, at best.
That’s the food you eat while you’re looking through the cabinets trying to find a better snack.
I am honestly not sure my dad remembers to eat lunch on 95% of days. It is extremely difficult for me to imagine him determining that it is time to eat lunch if someone else is not there to feel hungry and remind him that he does, too.
Regardless of what she’s eating, my dad loves to tell me, in detail, everything she’s eaten on any given day. “So I took one of those pasta nest things, and I boiled it up, and then I mixed it with some of the heart healthy fake butter stuff, and I made some steamed broccoli and mixed that in there with come chopped up garlic, you know the kind that comes in the big jar at Costco,” and so ad infinitum until pretty much I have died, standing there, listening to her tell me about how good salmon is with garlic and broccoli and noodles.
I KNOW, DAD, YOU’VE EATEN THAT FOR DINNER EVERY DAY FOR FIVE YEARS.
Dads are natural teachers though, and how else could she make sure you are well informed about the ease and deliciousness of the perfect evening meal? What if you FORGOT?
You can take the woman out of the dad but you can’t take the dad out of the woman?
Hahahaha: DIRTY!
And, I think it’s the other way around? My dad came out as trans last month. Being a lady (and a freaking WIZARD of accessorizing) has not muted her dad-like characteristics AT ALL.
So, you can take the man out of the dad, but you can’t take the dad out of the woman?
Yep, still dirty. 😉
(Also, sorry for transplaining there — I couldn’t remember if you were one of the people who was on board my “Hey my dad’s a lady!” thread in last month’s Dad Magazine post.)
Lol “transplaining” 🙂
Yep, I was on that thread. I was trying to say you can take the woman out, as in “reveal the woman,” whatever silly joke. My point is that, yes, it seems like she’s still very much your dad.
The only reply to that is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q27YiPRiewg Hahahahaha.
Also, you’re so right. Now I just get to hear endless stories about picking out shoes and jewelry. “I think it was a Wednesday, no, it must’ve been a Tuesday, I was wearing my white huarache sandals…”
I am still figuring out how to interact with my dad but I suspect that this is a bonding ritual that involves you exclaiming over the brilliance of buying garlic in a big jar from Costco. Perhaps followed by another conversation wherein you tell your dad in great detail about the meal you made and “do you know, I used some of that garlic from Costco!”
Just a guess, though. Dads are a strange species and I am prone to misinterpret their wishes and intentions.
Hahahahahahaha. YES.
My dad only eats one meal a day, in the evenings, and then some snacks later (he is retired and on a weird late night schedule as I would be if I were retired). He also reads the Toast so he may see this.
{Hi, Octodad!}
I can’t *wait* until I’m retired and can keep whatever weird schedule I want!
The breakfast of dad champions: kimchi on cream cheese on those wasa cracker things.
That sounds delicious! Your dad knows what’s up.
I told him about this and he goes “see I told your mom! I’m a hip dad!” he was thrilled
I think that between my spouse and I, I’m the dad because that sounds amazing. Also, I put hot sauce on everything. “Does it need hot sauce? A panel of dads weighed in and said probably, yes.”
5 out of 5 dads agree: you should definitely buy the hot sauce with the most warnings on it and subject your family to it
My dad is a big fan of taking whatever leftovers there are from the night before and frying them up with eggs in the morning. Spaghetti, stir fry, just plain rice, doesn’t matter.
Bonus points for alleging to anyone who will listen that you are making a frittata
My granddad–who was a TOTAL Dad–would say “You can have it with milk and sugar for breakfast” about dinner leftovers.
Whatever it is, he will a) mix it all together and then b) spend the next hour complaining that he ate too much of it, with much theatrical groaning.
My dad won’t eat when he is alone, so I believe his typical lunch plans are to call me halfway through my dinner to say “I’m STARVING, all I had today was a kale smoothie, why don’t I take you out to dinner?”
I have no idea what my dad’s eating for lunch now that he’s retired, but while he was working he ate a tuna sandwich with lettuce every single day for over 40 years. My mom used to make it for him and then put the empty can on the floor for our cat to push all around the kitchen with his nose.
Several years ago, my mom’s side of the family did a gift card exchange for Christmas. I got B&N, my mom got Starbucks, my brother got Best Buy, and my dad got Target. On the way home, he said, “We all ended up with good ones – you like books, your brother likes music, Mom likes coffee, and I love tuna!”
avocados, always, all the avocados. black salty liquorice. and scalding hot instant coffee that is more caffeine-delivery-system than actual coffee.
dads and food, though. my mom likes to tell me the story of when they were on their honeymoon, and my dad was starving and had the hunger-rage. he saw a bakery across a busy street, and was like, GIMME THAT CROISSANT and actually walked into traffic (insane french traffic, no less) to get to the bakery, leaving my mom to burst into tears on the sidewalk, thinking that her new husband was going to die in a traffic accident all because he wanted some baked goods.
The one thing my dad pretty much always makes when alone in the house is chipped beef. He knows how to make other things; he just doesn’t. Of course, now that he has a fancy pellet grill, he’s been experimenting with things like making his own beef jerky and pastrami. He was super excited about the meat slicer my mom got him for the holidays, because now when the deli guy asks him if he wants the meat sliced, he can just say “Give it to me whole! I can slice it later if I need to,” instead of calling my mom to ask.
This isn’t necessarily a lunch-time thing for him, but my dad will slice up a raw potato or some raw red cabbage, salt the hell out of them, and then crunch away. He doesn’t like cooked potatoes or cabbage, though.
My dad makes epic salads that need a bowl the size of a large movie theatre popcorn bucket and are delicious. These salads are a work of art and every time I go home to visit he must make me at least three.
Does anyone else’s dad make omelettes out of literally anything? I once had three bites left of fajita meat & veggies that I couldn’t finish, and he took it home and made an omelette out of it the next morning. He did the same with some sesame chicken from the Chinese takeout place.
this! my dad is an omelet master.
his other main food group is starbucks. we went fishing once and he made two cups at home, then stopped at his shop on the way and got a hot and an iced coffee to go so he wouldn’t run out.
I don’t know what he eats for lunch: my dad isn’t the kind of dad who goes into this very much. (I guess he gets Chipotle sometimes?) I do, however, know what my dad eats for snacks: any kind of jarred herring, pickled green tomatoes, and then he pretends he doesn’t have any dessert but actually eats like 3-4 Milano cookies.
He also appreciates all varieties of sausage. This is a favorite part of traveling for my dad, trying the local sausage specialities.
Recently my dad’s fallen off the bandwagon so he’s eating at the cafeteria in his building, where the food’s really bad and the women gives him way more than everyone else because she thinks he’s cute. BUT based on our phone call the other night, he really needs to start bringing salads to work again. IIRC from the last time he did this regularly, he buys one of those gigantic spring mix boxes from Costo and splits that up into servings. Then he alternates between adding canned salmon and canned tuna to the salads. There’s way more to this salad process but I’ve forgotten, even though he’s explained it in detail to me many times.
My dad will combine/heat up whatever leftovers he can find and then add the most crucial ingredient: APPLESAUCE. He eats applesauce with EVERYTHING. He has been doing this for at least as long as I’ve been alive. I have asked when and how the applesauce thing began, but he can’t remember. My mom got so mad at him for always using any old dirtied spoon in the applesauce jar (leaving mystery gobs floating in there), that he now just turns it upside down and blobs it onto his plate. He then swirls it in with whatever other foods are in proximity, from chicken in gravy to lasagna. None of us get it.
My dad’s lunch is, and always has been. ‘bits and pieces’.
This is a plate of small salady things laid out flat in one layer. Usual culprits: plain cheese sliced into small rectangles, tinned beetroot, a smattering of lettuce, two or three olives, a gherkin. Optional: three-day-old leftovers of anything.
For lunch-dessert, it is always one slice of two-day-old bread, preferably the end of the loaf, buttered and cut in half, first half eaten, second half additionally spread with peanut butter and then eaten as well.
I feel like ASSERTIVENESS!! must be an article about how if you just dress nicely and spend all day going from business to business with your resume and a solid pitch, you will have 10 job offers by the end of the day.
NAILED IT
gotta POUND THE PAVEMENT.
I was SO RELIEVED when I was talking with my Dad and he asked about my job search and he said “I haven’t been on the job market in 20 years, I’m sorry I can’t offer any advice.” Oh Dad, if only you knew! Your refusal to offer advice is a gentle balm on the wounds caused by all those old people who think we just need to call up a few places and ask if they’re hiring.
My dad was absolutely That Dad for years, although he hadn’t been on the job market since before I was born. Now I work in a smallish field he doesn’t entirely understand, so I can sense him getting all revved up to offer advice, pausing, and saying “Well, you’ll find something eventually.” It’s very nice.
My partner’s family in Houston is pretty sure the solution to job hunting woes is “move to Houston.”
With oil at $50/barrel, not many people in town are hiring. Even with an economy more diverse than in the past, having the oil & gas sector take a sharp downturn has had a pretty notable effect.
BUT our restaurants are dope and our Toast meetup group is fab!
SAME called to ask for help on my first interview and he was like well I’ve only had to interview really once? Ask your mother?
Oh god bless his heart.
GAHHH YES
my ex’s father kept pressuring me to march into the fancy academic program i wanted to work at with a tray of homemade brownies and ask why i hadn’t heard back yet on my application.
that i never heard back was proof to him that it was my fault for not following this advice.
YES, my dad’s also in the cult of leftovers, combining everything for lunch to make sure there’s room in the fridge… for more leftovers. thanks to dad i get huffy about going out for A Nice Lunch because surely there’s some old food somewhere that needs to be eaten??? what if it gets lonely
every month i get a little sad that i can’t actually read all these articles
I MEAN, DOGWEAR. i don’t have dogs but i feel like i need the DAD PERSPECTIVE on which dog vests are best for winter???
And don’t forget the little dog boots that keep their paws from getting irritated by road salt.
Yesterday I was checking the dates and thinking “YEP! WHERE is Dad magazine???”
My dad got himself a refurbished Vitamix for Christmas, so he’s gotten on the green smoothie train. (“You put in a whole bag of kale… and it blends down to nothing!”) Also the turmeric train. And it’s still a bit early, but once his tomato plants start producing, I’m sure he’ll be back on the “lycopene!” train.
Dads love lycopene.
(ETA: in response to the dadlunch poll, but also just general dadness I guess)
THEY DO, HOLY SHIT, THIS IS A UNIVERSAL TRUTH. My dad has an incredible vegetable garden, but the star are always the tomatoes, and as soon as I read the word “lycopene” on the ketchup bottle, he has LATCHED ONTO IT.
I think it’s a ketchup-based conspiracy.
my dad has had a long and affectionate fight with my mother over whether his tomatoes are fruit or vegetable.
he says fruit and she says veg, both with passion and conviction. she’s really the gardener but he’s the science-y factoid one (i take after him). i refuse to get drawn in anymore 🙂
What’s the saying about that? “Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing you shouldn’t put it in a fruit salad.” So, they’re both kind of right?
My dad LOVES green smoothies, and every time I’m over there in the morning he offers me some as if today I am going to decide I want cold, blended kale. (I mean, I love kale, but I don’t even drink fruit smoothies unless I’m somewhere with more than one Jamba Juice in a 300 mile radius, I’m really fine with chewing my food myself.)
the daddest part of this is that the Vitamix is refurbished. So dad.
Dad nutrition: growing at the rate of one NyTimes article their high school friend posted on Facebook per year
My food scientist father-in-law will still go off on rants about how the food company he was working for at the time wouldn’t let him push the lycopene angle on tomato products back in the day (he would have been a lycopene pioneer! he tells us). He was also eating very precise amounts of blueberries (blackberries?) and walnuts because of some specific micronutrient there for a while. Basically, his additional food knowledge has allowed him to reach peak dad food habits well ahead of other dads. Or something.
A few weeks ago, my father-in-law gave my husband an issue of a personal finance magazine… and I think it might just be the real life Dad Magazine. I don’t have it handy, but the cover stories were things like “To Retire… or Not?!” and “Things to Consider Before Buying that Boat”.
My dad gets Model Railroader magazine and this other one, I forget the name but it sounds like Country Living, but it’s not Country Living, it’s Dad Country Living. So, so many headlines about storage solutions and tinkering between the two of them.
My dad gets Consumer Reports and has since the 70s.
A blog I read occasionally features irritated criticisms of the methodologies Consumer Reports used in recent issues (e.g. those special AA batteries calibrated for electronics http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2015/02/rating-batte… which always carries the implicit dad-gripe “CR has really fallen off since the 70s.”
Thank you for the link. As a long-time consumer reports subscriber, my dad will be very interested in seeing this. I’ll have to send it along immediately.
For his birthday one year, I got my brother (who is actually a father, but not *yet* fully Dad) a subscription to Guns and Gardens, a southern lifestyle magazine. It is apparently as insane/awesome as it sounds.
My favorite magazine for the southern dad, Guns and Gardens. Covering the fundamentals.
I didn’t even know this was a thing and this now may be the Father’s Day gift I was looking for.
I got my boss a subscription to that as a Christmas gift a few years back. He is a definite dad.
My apartment is filled with magazines with headlines such as “228 Storage Tips and Easy Projects,” “Get perfectly smooth walls and ceilings” “Win the war on weeds” for illustrious publications like Pro Secrets for DIY.
My childless husband is a Dad-in-training
…I subscribe to “This Old House” magazine but only because I love the show so much (because of all the surrogate Dads WITH BOSTON ACCENTS on it)!
I read the other day that Julia Louis-Dreyfuss received a text from Joe Biden after he saw her on the cover of the Amtrak magazine. Dad Magazines in the wild.
I LOVE HOW MUCH JOE BIDEN LOVES TRAINS
He is like a surrogate Dad to this whole great nation.
He’s like a human Ayn Rand.
Now I want to read “Joe Biden’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It would have approximately 300% more King’s Cross/Hogwarts Express rhapsodizing in it, for sure.
I went to some friends’ of my parents with my dad last week. It was a casual buffet thing, and when he couldn’t find a knife in the cutlery, my dad used his Swiss Army knife to eat his dinner. Dads!
Receipts From The Hardware Store: How Long Should You Keep Them?
(Answer: forever, because you never know!)
It’s important to buy those plastic receipt holders from staples or costco in excess so when you keep all your receipts forever, you can keep them organized too.
I listen to a morning radio show where, one a month, they make the one guy pull out his wallet and they go through his receipts to discuss whether or not he’s crazy for saving each one. He kept saving gas receipts “in case he got a bad batch.”
My husband always gets a gas receipt because OTHERWISE THEY’LL OVERCHARGE YOU.
We should start a DadMag quarterly insert for Husband-Dads.
Does he keep them for a while or do they get thrown away at the pump?
My mom got gas receipts just so she could reset her mileage since the last fillup and do what I as a child viewed as very complicated math (long division???) to determine how efficient her car was. I remember just begging her to turn on the car for the heat or A/C while she was doing that math, which worked some of the time. Why she didn’t have a calculator in the car when she did it EVERY SINGLE TIME is beyond me.
My dad did this, too! Oh thank god I thought I was the only one who suffered (not silently) in the hot or freezing car during this ritual!
My husband does this too! He has a little notebook in the glove compartment.
My dad is a huge believer in the Gas Notebook. He goes back and does the math and writes in the gas mileage, too. He’s made me one for each new car, helpfully labeled with my name and the car make/model. Then, some months back, I showed him Gas Cubby, a gas notebook app in which I’d been keeping track of fill-ups.
He didn’t actually tear up with pride, but I think he wanted to.
Yes, you should totally save your gas receipts because you can get a bad batch: http://carbuying.jalopnik.com/why-you-should-get-…
You can throw it out when you fill up again, though, so you don’t need to hold onto them forever.
O_O was my face the entire time reading that article.
Receipts From The Hardware Store Pt. 2: Mailing Them In For Rebates!
DOGWEAR. My dad would be ALL OVER that shit. He has been absolutely ridiculous since he and my mom got a new puppy last year. He’ll give me detailed reports on what my “sister” did that day and it always takes me a minute to recall that it wasn’t my human little sister who was playing in the dog park and going for five mile walks with them. He also cradles her like a princess and sings to her, but that’s nothing new.
My parents are SO INTO the dog now that every kid has left the house/state. It is all about the dog. I get many updates on what she’s up to (from both parents).
Gendered dogwear, even! When I was a girl, my dad never bought me a single pink thing, but his darling 2 year-old pup most certainly has a pink collar now!
I assumed ASSERTIVENESS! was an article about dog stuff like Cesar Millan’s whole “pack leader” thing.
I always enjoy the comments on Dad Magazine posts. It makes me happy to hear about other people’s nice dads, even though it also makes me sad that I very much do not have a Nice Dad. But it’s reassuring that they exist, being sweet and funny and kind to their adult children. Go (other people’s) Dads!
Same here. There’s probably a german word for this, right?
Dädenfreude
My dad passed away 20 months ago, but I still love Dad Magazine and all the attendant comments. Maybe that would be Dädentotenfreude?
(Miss you, Dad.)
“I’m in you, more so when they put me in the ground.” That song’s about having a bitter history but the line is still true. My dad died when I was not quite 24. He was only 50, but he’d put on SO much mileage with smoking and drinking. We weren’t terribly close just because of our similarities. If there wasn’t anything to say why start talking? We both kinda have conversational inertia–both rest and motion.
Then the last time we went to Disney World together we’re in line for Space Mountain and he’s telling me about The Pretender. Apparently he loved that show. “Wow, JP’s geeking out here.” I’d been telling him, the Hungarian self-styled redneck from Detroit, about “insurgent country” or whatever you’d call that mid-90s stuff–Old 97s, BR-549, Freakwater and playing him Jonathan Richman’s “I, Jonathan” on the drive down. “This is GOOD.” (because he never dropped his mid-60s fandom, it just resided next to Bocephus later in life)
I brought the Neil Diamond box set too, He’d been really jazzed when I told him my friend and I were seeing him the previous December.
Then he dies and we’re going through his stuff and there’s this Boris Vallejo-decorated dagger and a fucking “Highlander” katana. “He was a fanboy!”
“My boy was just like me…” (which also includes being ridiculous, not that tall in the end, still really excited about riding Peter Pan’s Flight, not eating breakfast enough)
Also.
I read the comments here and pretend all of them are talking about My Dad.
My dad became the stand-in Dad for like 8 extra neighborhood kids due to a combination of their dads’ absenteeism/deployment/just not niceness and he just went with it. One of said kids even still goes with us on family vacations. Nice Dads don’t really mind if a kid is not officially their kid, they would still be happy to tell them all about whether raising your own chickens results in cheaper eggs or about that time the dog really got into the trash or whether a riding mower is worth the investment (ALWAYS).
What is it with dads and dogs? My dad hasn’t had a dog for about 30 years; if you tried to talk him into getting a dog, he would say no. But my husband and I got a dog and now it’s the first thing he asks about when I call. “How’s the dog?”
And I genuinely had no idea that weird lunches were a generalized Dad behavior. When I want to tease my dad about questionable taste I say “Sure, but you’re the kind of person who will eat lima beans and Spam at the same meal, on purpose.” Because it’s TRUE.
My dad is the same way! He installed and figured out how to work Google Hangouts just so he could video-call us and admire his granddog. My parents went to visit my brother a few weeks ago and the first thing my dad reported on was what my brother’s dogs are like (not as good as my dog, obviously).
So true! My Dad refused to get another dog (even though Mum would love one) after my childhood labrador died about 10 years ago, and pretends to be all gruff about dogs, but after my lab had a major operation a couple of months ago, he came over to babysit him for a day so my husband and I could go to work, and called me more than once over that week just to ask about my dog. Dad also spent a good portion of his last visit saying what a gorgeous dog Major is! The dog gruffness is definitely all feigned.
“DOGWEAR”
my dad tried to name me after his dog
I’m his first born
That’s a sign of true love. He knew you’d be his new *human* best friend!
Dad Logic
I’m almost positive my grandmother told me they picked my dad’s name because, while she was pregnant, they just called the future baby my grandfather’s dog’s name. When he was born, they couldn’t think of anything else better, so they stuck with the dog’s name for their ONLY child.
I don’t think I could have made that story up in my head, could I?
My cousin has the same name (ish–Ross vs Rosco) as one of my grandfather’s favorite dogs. I’m 95% sure this is not a coincidence.
However, girls named Molly are just out of luck, apparently–everyone will tell them a story about a dog/friend’s dog/dog they once met named Molly.
Is your dad Sean Connery in an Indiana Jones movie? “We named the dog Indiana.”
it’s possible he thinks he is
before I went on study abroad my dad and I were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table and he was acting kind of strangely and finally he looks me in the eye and goes “have you seen taken?”
It may be my own dad-ness, but that made me mist up.
Also, the implied dad-badassery there is next-level epic.
I would name a child of either gender after my male dog and canine lifemate. They should be so lucky.
ME TOO.
Dad: Let’s name her Betsy that’s a cute name!
Mom: That’s the dog’s name. You aren’t naming the baby after the dog.
Dad: Well change the dog’s name, it doesn’t know its name anyway.
They did not end up naming me after the dog.
that is delightful
my dad’s dog was named domino…
Mine wanted to, and I think was only thwarted by my gender and that there’s no way to make “Zeke” a girl’s name.
And then he wanted “Bathsheba”. My grandmother had to intervene.
True story: a friend and his wife got a puppy while she was pregnant so he could name the puppy Frodo and thus the child could NOT be named Frodo. After ruling out vast swathes of Tolkein names, they settled on a Zelazny prince instead. Not Random – that was the first choice, after Frodo and Gandalf.
Regarding dogwear, I have a little treat pouch/poop bag dispenser combo that clips to my pants, and though I am a childless woman, it makes me feel like a dad. Recently at the dog park an Actual Dad approached me to tell me that he liked my treat pouch, which was confusing until I realized that he was making a joke because he has the same one. I felt affirmed.
Oh god, I love Dad Magazine so much but it always reminds me of how Not A Dad my father is in many ways – he’s kept up with current music (though not much Pop), he’s usually more up on technological trends than I am (he was a journalist covering tech and tech policy for 30 years before moving into PR), he gives zero fucks about Dadly Sports or lawn car, he never sends me texts worrying about whether I’ve done some sort of household/seasonal maintenance thing, etc.
On the other hand, he tells literally everyone he meets about me and how proud of me he is, even back when I wasn’t doing much to be proud of, he make terrible, terrible puns ALL THE TIME, he gave me a tool set and an impact driver when I moved out (he also cried), and he is a local history buff to the point of not only leading free tours on cultural/architectural history around the city through a group out of the public library, he actually is now on their board and originated at least one tour himself. Also our father-daughter bonding time is that we both work two film festivals together, a silent film fest and a film noir fest, and he has HISTORICALLY ACCURATE OUTFITS FOR BOTH OF THEM.
I <3 your dad.
Also, I <3 silent film and am very curious which one you work at. My significant other is a silent film accompanist. (He wears a three-piece suit and a pocket watch while he’s working, but those are just his normal clothes…)
SFSFF! I recently got promoted from “volunteer who can be trusted to do pretty much anything” to “unpaid staff because as the festival got bigger they had to put more restrictions on volunteers, but those basically didn’t apply to me because of my history and I noted the issues it was causing with some other volunteers and straight-up said “you need to either treat me like the rest of the volunteers or make me staff” and they fucking field-promoted me and slapped a headset on me to boot” to “paid Stage Manager despite not having done anything remotely like it since, like, middle school theatre camp”.
I have to say, I always admired our performers, but as SM I have nothing but love for them – they are multitalented and superbly professional as well as kind, and the one guy who was getting to be awful was dropped off the roster before I ever had to deal with him directly. Our presenters, not so much, necessarily…*
*edit just in case this comes up in someone’s Google search – our presenters are all extremely knowledgeable and often experts on the film/director/star/era etc., and many of them simply have no or little experience a) addressing an entire house (with balcony), b) using a microphone with or without podium, and c) actually having to time their speeches, and d) I have very little time to prep them beforehand as we do not really have a functioning green room. So while it may be frustrating for me it is also probably frustrating for them.
Your dad sounds a lot like my dad. Not exactly the Dad Magazine demographic, but: proud of me to the point of recounting news about me to all his friends, loved terrible puns, was very fond of history (though he was more of a “sign up for popular-history-book-of-the-month clubs” person than a local history person), and our father-daughter bonding time involved a lot of trips to museums when I was growing up. I miss him a whole lot. But these Dad Magazine threads always remind me of him in a good way.
Individual dads are often Dads in some way and not in others – my dad is very much not a Dad on many things (very into clothing, doesn’t fix things/know anything about tools, not really a pun person), but sometimes very much a Dad on other things (barbecuing, the dog, THE WEATHER). It’s a range!
dads n dogs.
my dad loves dogs but hasn’t had a dog since before he and mom got married. sometimes on the weekends they specifically go to nice downtown strolling neighborhoods so he can say hello to all the dogs outside the coffee shops.
Okay but is it the Italian seasonings tomato paste? Because that is delicious, although I eat it with a spoon and pieces of mozzarella instead of on a sandwich.
Your Dad and my Dad are twins, separated at birth.
Thank you Jaya, Matt and Dog Dad. I was starting to get angry about angry people over at Jezebel at the Roundup page. Dad Magazine’s here to put a hand on my shoulder like the Rooster. “When shit gets you down, just say ‘fuck it!’ and get yourself some terriers in the snow!”
Y’ALL. ACTUAL DAD EMAIL ABOUT ACTUAL DAD FOOD:
E,
Last night I finished your tres leche ice cream. Today I replaced it. On sale for $2.88/pt. upon checkout we received a coupon for $1 off two haagen das pints. You may want to use it this weekend while HD is still on sale. BTW, I bought pastrami. I will have it on rye, you might want to pick up a decent hard roll if you want some.
HD is one sale until Saturday.
D
That is awesome! My mum likes to sign off her emails to me as M, and I can’t tell if it stands for Mum or for her first name, which also starts with M…it feels very James Bond though, makes me laugh!
Are you ready for duty then?
That also reminds me of Dominic Monaghan talking about Viggo Mortensen telling everyone about the salmon that should be easy to catch at the camping site they made during the shooting of the Orc chase for “The Two Towers”. “You should catch some fish in a few minutes.”
And the Indian scale double actor then scolded Viggo and ordered him around the kitchen.
I’m saying 1. I love the Lord Of The Rings dvd appendices and 2. Dads! (Viggo is one)
Are you ready for duty then?
That also reminds me of Dominic Monaghan talking about Viggo Mortensen telling everyone about the salmon that should be easy to catch at the camping site they made during the shooting of the Orc chase for "The Two Towers". "You should catch some fish in a few minutes."
And the Indian scale double actor then scolded Viggo and ordered him around the kitchen.
I'm saying 1. I love the Lord Of The Rings dvd appendices and 2. Dads! (Viggo is one)
Doggone it! I have to have a subscription!
I can’t wait for the article on how to consolidate your remotes!
My father is only allowed to cook on the grill. Because when he cooks in the kitchen, he favors baked chicken breasts with barbecue sauce (which does not caramelize and is therefore awful) and boiling vegetables into oblivion. He once boiled a whole batch of brussels sprouts I was planning to roast; I still haven't quite forgiven him.
Eagerly awaiting Dad Magazine’s article on cleaning the gutters. It’s a nice Sunday in Iowa? Dad’s cleaning the gutters! “They get full of leaves and start to smell and there’s no drainage. Gotta do it!”
What's stopping you?!?!!?!? I also like to add chocolate chips to my fluffernutter, because I have an unhealthy addiction to sugar.