I decided on making homemade fruit and nut chocolate bars, and some homemade Skor bars, and am going to try to not eat them all by the holidays, especially the Skor bars which are out-of-this-world.
Because his family is a true-to-the-bone pancake family, I really wanted him to share with me the secrets to making a good pancake, thin and delicate, perfectly browned on the outside, soft on the inside. He gave me a recipe, one that he has memorized. A set of very specific instructions, the right temp, the right amount of time for frying. I followed it to a tee, and sure enough, the pancakes came out the way I had always dreamed they would.