My first bite of Middle Eastern gastronomy was around age fifteen. There was a lovely Lebanese woman in her seventies who owned a food cart in a small shopping mall. She made her falafel like giant vegetable burgers with hearty chunks of chick peas, tahini, fresh parsley, garlic, lemon, and other magical ingredients she had in her secret stash. She would not share her ingredients or recipes with me except explaining a little cultural background and what basic ingredients went into her tasty street food. Her kibbhe was not the traditional raw ground lamb though. She instead baked finely minced lamb and seasonings into a square patty that was quite thin and crispy. I cherished her food. I later found out she was an aunt of one of my friends.
Posts tagged #culture
Connecting Through Story
Joyous connection is the very stuff of story. The rise of social media, the popularity of The Moth, TED Talks, and StoryCorps, all point to the importance of story in our daily lives. Story connects us to our shared history. Personal stories of life today are cathartic for the teller, and studies show that the brain relaxes when it makes a coherent narrative out of something chaotic. They can be healing for the teller and audience alike, but story has a much broader historical significance as well. It not only helps us to understand earlier events, but also to understand the hopes, beliefs, and dreams of those who lived through those events. Story is a gift of joyous connection sent to us from times past.
