Three photos are stuck to the front panel of Annie Sperling’s oven. It’s the only surface in her Eden Prairie white-wood-covered kitchen that can attract a magnet, so that’s where they have hung for almost five years, since shortly after she moved into the house with her husband Adam and their two kids.
In the top photo, Adam shares ice cream with his young son and daughter. In the middle, a kiss from his son. And on the bottom, Adam and Annie stand behind their infant in a high chair.
Every time she opens that oven — which is often, as an avid home cook — Sperling thinks of Adam, who died in early 2020 from cancer.
The photos are just one way that food is intertwined with her memories of him. And there are so many memories. The spaghetti sauce, his specialty, for which he had no recipe, and that Sperling has tried to recreate for their kids. The twice-baked cinnamon-sugar almond cookies he loved. The matzo ball soup she would cook for him to help him feel better when his health was declining, and that she still makes on Jewish holidays, like Rosh Hashanah, which begins Oct. 2.
