Culinary Martyrdom

Grape Leaves cooked with Olive Oil

My son proudly spoons up some tabouli

As I sat at my kitchen table this afternoon cutting tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions into Lilliputian-sized pieces to put in my salata tabouli, I started to ask myself one question:

Why?

This whole issue crossed my mind earlier this morning as well, when my walking partner and I were discussing the kinds of snacks and meals we ate growing up as kids. I do not remember my mother slaving away in the kitchen the way I find myself doing on a nearly daily basis. After school, I used to eat some cheese and crackers or an apple smeared with peanut butter. My walking partner (she's from the Midwest) said that in her home, cottage cheese was the snack of choice. They dipped crackers in it, stuck fruit in it, and ate it (like I did) with Doritos. Nighttime dinners were simple, quick, and filling.

My mom was a working, single mother, and did not have time to chop or julienne or even simmer food, most of the time. Most weekdays our dinners consisted of opening cans, boil-in-bag (remember those?), or an occasional take-out meal, which was usually Captain D's, that great little seafood place. Mom did the best she could with the funds and time she had, and I turned out just fine.

It was not until I married my husband that I truly realized that the foods I had grown up eating for dinner could not be classified as "meals," but were rather snacks or appetizers at best, and at worst, just plain inedible. Thankfully my husband ate pretty much whatever I served him when we were first married, but I could see in his eyes that he longed for his mama's cooking. Something was missing from his plate; his palate was bland and untantilized. It wasn't only the food itself that he longed for, but also the emotion behind its preparation, which I can now express was a combination of love, an eagerness to please, and sheer exhaustion. How can I define what my husband had been missing? Because I, too, have joined the ranks of what I call the culinary martyrs.

I fully comprehended the depth of my husband's relationship with food the first time he took me out to eat authentic Arabic cuisine. Arabs in Birmingham and a few select local seekers of gastronomic delights knew that a tiny restaurant run by a Christian Palestinian family served each Monday night what was simply referred to as "The Special."

We were seated at a table in the back. The dining room was decorated with paintings of Bedouins and old-fashioned Turkish coffee pots. The waiter, donning a black bow tie and jacket, came to our table to take our order. He and my husband exchanged greetings and begin to chat. Thinking back on that night, I remember hearing, "kh blah kh kh kh blah blah blah kh kh blah blah," but now I know they said stuff like, "How's your family?" and "What's your news these days?" and "What would you like to order?"

I took a few sips of my sweetened iced tea, drumming my fingers on the table, anticipating the arrival of The Special. After about ten minutes, the waiter arrived with a large platter and placed it between us. On the plate was stuffed yellow squash cooked in tomato sauce, stuffed grape leaves, kubbeh, tabouli, hummus, and babaganoush.

We ate and ate and ate. We barely spoke to one another; the food was the entire dining pleasure, and really too delicious to be interrupted by chit chat. After wiping out the entire plateful, we ordered coffee and Arabic sweets. I needed a wheel barrow to haul me out of that place, I was so full.

On the way home, my husband told me quietly, "Back home, that plate would have been just a sample. You should see the platefuls of food back home."

In my mind's eye, I could not visualize what he was talking about. We had just consumed enormous quantities of food! How much could those people back home serve for one meal?

Now, sixteen years later, and living back home, I know. I can stuff squash, roll grape leaves, make trays of mansef, stuff cabbage, brown/boil/roast chickens (it's a three-part process)--you name it, I will do it. My mother-in-law taught me all of my skills, and did so patiently. I ruined many, many meals on my quest for culinary martyrdom. I learned about the satisfaction of moving from step A to step Z, when the bales of molokhia are brought into the kitchen for picking or the giant bunches of parsley are staring me in the face, waiting to be made into tabouli, or the three kilos of squash are waiting to be cored and stuffed, or at Eid ul-Adha when 30 gallon bags of freshly slaughtered lamb are set before me, waiting to be cleaned and packaged and distributed to the less fortunate, with, of course, some set aside for mansef.

There is something about this labor of love, this way to my husband and children's hearts, through their stomachs. Every once in a while, I dread cooking, but most of the time, no one can keep me out of the kitchen. Even here in Amman where so many women work outside the home, I see this time consuming way of life starting to become a memory. Microwaves are in almost every kitchen, and fast-food delivery trucks are on every street. Just the other night, the delivery guy tried to bring us two KFC family meals. He had the wrong house.

I am in no way knocking convenience, and we eat out just like everyone else. But there is just something I get from seeing my family well fed and happy, or the feeling of walking into a house where garlic has just been fried to be put in a pot of molokhia or fresh okra, or the pizza dough baking in the oven has been made by my own hands.

I now live in a different food dimension from the West. And I rather enjoy it.