You may know Emmy-award-winning actor Tony Shalhoub as detective Adrian Monk from the award-winning TV series Monk. Or his time on the NBC sitcom Wings. Or maybe you saw him in movies like Men in Black or Galaxy Quest or Spy Kids or the animated movie Cars.
But you may not know that every year, for more years than he wants to count, he spends his vacation at a lake in northeastern Wisconsin with his very large extended family. “It's close to all of our hearts,” said Shalhoub.
He said the annual gathering can include 55 people.
“We still do it every year for a week and we do not have it catered. We do it all ourselves and it's pandemonium,” said Shalhoub.
He’s just written a new book of vacation memories and cooking stories with his daughter Josie Adams called “We Thought They’d Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family.”
I have become kind of a product of all of them.Tony Shalhoub
Shalhoub said the book is many things, including a way to share some of this family history.
“People know me, you know, from different films or television, things that I've done, but they don't exactly know what shaped me. Not just my parents, but of course my eight older siblings and my one younger sibling,” he said.
The family gathers every year for everything from card games to swimming.
“There's a lot of activities, outdoor activities, there's games, there's a talent show,” he said, but “mostly it revolves around the food and around the meals preparation and the meal planning and the meal cleanup and the eating. A lot of eating.”
The book is not only memories and family history, but it’s also a working cookbook, with recipes from Tony’s Fish Stew to Josie’s Cherry Pie.
Not to toot my own horn, but I am partial to the fish stew.Tony Shalhoub
Shalhoub said his favorite recipe in the book is Warm Stuffed Grape Leaves because “we all gather around a table and roll the grape leaves as a group because it's labor intensive and the older ones are teaching the little ones how to do it. And … I think that I would have to say that's my favorite just because it involves so many hands and so much tradition."
The vacation is also about getting together as a family, “this is what the reunion is all about is new people being brought into the family, carrying on the generations and the traditions,” said Adams, who hopes that the book “makes people want to get together with people they love, whether that's their, their chosen family, their friends, their in-laws, whoever it may be.”
I hope it inspires people to just not take those relationships for granted.Josie Adams
Shalhoub said it’s an eclectic book that brings out the “fun in dysfunctional,” and it’s also about tolerance and forgiveness.
“Maybe someone along the way is inspired to, you know, maybe reach out to a relative or a sibling that maybe they haven't had an easy time with or they haven't spoken to for a while and that they are inspired to kind of extend an olive branch and maybe mend a fence here and there.”
The Cabin is bringing Shalhoub and Adams to the Egyptian Theatre on Friday, Nov. 6.
