Sean O'Kane

Throw mortadella on the grill.

This suggestion (or some variation) has been pushed to me in a number of Instagram photos and videos in recent weeks. Did you know you can throw mortadella on the grill for a delicious snack? Did you know Anthony Bourdain’s favorite sandwich was a fried mortadella sandwich? Did you know you, hey you, the guy in front of the phone — YOU can throw mortadella on the grill?

I was being digitally stalked by Big Mortadella.

But we had mortadella, and I was grilling corn, so I threw it on. It’s as good as you can imagine, if you also haven’t been algo-pressured into doing this yet. The thinly-sliced mortadella’s baby-smooth texture makes for a Lay’s potato chip-like crisp when grilled. It’s far more delicate than bacon, which now resembles a tiger’s tongue in my memory bank. Friendship ended with bacon.

The mortadella was getting a little old so it was a sensible move. My son adored it. One bite made his eyes go TV commercial big, and before I got a verbal response he was stacking the rest on his cheeseburger.

We aren’t normally this animalistic with our meals. Call it a Memorial Day hangover. The burgers, the mortadella, the corn all needed to be eaten.

I’m always tickled how many different foods my son has tried before his sixth birthday that I didn’t have until I was 20, or 30. Sushi (at first chicken tender or sweet potato rolls or shrimp tempura, but recently his first salmon nigiri), Vietnamese Pho, Indian dal, on and on.

Chinese buffet was the most immediately accessible “different” food in my home town, and the only special occasion restaurant we really ever traveled to eat at was, you guessed it, a hibachi place in Syracuse.

(I used to fast all day before going to the hibachi place in order to eat everything presented to me; I also used to eat small ice cream cakes in one sitting in college as a half-joking challenge. What a wonder our young bodies are.)

My family is about as traditional white/anglo/Irish/Italian as it goes, so dinners were a pretty predictable mix growing up. I didn’t venture too far in college, culinarily, and regrettably spun my wheels the first few years in New York City, partly because of a timid palate, but mostly because I was making $40,000.

I didn’t mean to turn this into a parenting blog, and I have some other ideas I intend to noodle on (pun, if not intended, then at least not actively avoided). Really I felt the urge to defibrillate my comfort with form and voice. They’re muscles that need work.

But it is undeniable how much your view of life shifts through the lens of your kid. (At least if you have one; I could imagine two complicating that with so much mental noise.) And it thrills me to watch him blissfully and blindly chomp his way through a world of food, despite some scary early choking incidents related to his tracheomalacia. (That’s another story.)

From his first real bite (avocado) we succeeded in having him eat what we eat. Fish, Thai food, whatever. He has his moments where a food will fall out of favor, and you cannot (nor do you really want to) avoid tenders and pizza — good lord do we eat a lot of pizza. But he’s always game to try things, and most often enjoys them, and that frankly kicks ass.

So, as he can attest to: throw some mortadella on the grill.