Food, Family, and Memory

On Feminism and Fish Tacos

cookingbarefoot My sister and I were raised in a house with two working parents. When we were younger, our father worked nights while our mother worked days. This schedule left our dad on dinner duty. Luckily, having been raised by a working mother himself, our father already had cooking skills in place. My mother, who didn’t know the difference between olive oil and Karo syrup, wrote a note to my dad’s mom thanking her for teaching him how to cook. My mother claims it was Gloria Steinem’s influence that led her to delegate my dad to kitchen duty, but really it was because he was the only one who knew how to “wear the apron” in the house.

Despite our mother’s feminist take on women in the kitchen, my sister and I happily cook at our stoves, bare-feet and all. I’ll whip up lunches and dinners for friends and family, but Alexandra goes beyond, preparing dinner for her new husband nearly every night. I recently had the opportunity to witness this firsthand when I invited myself (last minute) to their Upper West Side apartment for dinner. When I entered, Alexandra called out from her galley kitchen, “I’m making fish tacos. Go sit down at the table.” I went into the dining room and saw their new table was set with their brand new “everyday” dishware I had purchased for them off their wedding registry. My brother-in-law entered a few moments later and, in between work calls, began to pour a buttery, slightly sweet white wine to accompany the spicy fish tacos.

Sitoo - Nostalgia - Main

fatayas Sitoo means grandmother in Arabic, a deeply respectful title.

There was a small Syrian market and bakery called Sitoo George’s in the next town from where I grew up that sold the ‘necessary’ ingredients to recreate the taste of Syria for the immigrants that migrated to America. Two brothers and their wives ran it, naming it Sitoo, an homage to their grandmother who taught them to bake before the left their homeland. With the skills and her recipes they immigrated and opened a small store.

When they first opened the wives would bake spinach and meat pies called fataya and the brothers would make pita bread in a small home oven. When the word spread, they couldn’t bake fast enough. Construction started and a bakery was born. As time passed and demand increased they slowly became automated.

The new kitchen had large windows for customers to watch the process. A slot in the wall was made to accommodate a heavy canvas covered conveyer belt to transport the pies to their wives as they came out of second hand pizza oven. The two sisters-in-laws at the check out either bagged them or plucked them off the belt to sell to waiting customers.

My Mother's Guacamole

My mother made guacamole. Its key ingredients were avocadoes, diced onion, sour cream, and worcestshire sauce, (at least it didn't have mayonnaise like her famous cottage cheese dip, which also had worcestshire sauce) but it wasn't really like the guacamole that we make or serve today.

It was fabulous, though, because it was elegant - at least, we thought it was fabulous then. It was smooth. Absolutely mashed to a pulp with a fork and blended with sour cream, almost pistachio green.

Sisters

For the last year my sister and I have thought what a neat thing it would be to go back to the exact places that we visited on our first trip to Europe with our mother 50 years ago. I am not exactly certain how this trip idea started but the one thing that I am certain of is that it centered around a lively food discussion. Somehow all of life's most interesting memories seem always to involve food. So the idea of retracing our first trip sounded like a interesting idea.

My sister and I take an annual trip to France together and we have done that forever but this trip was going to start in Madrid and then would end in Paris which always feels as comfortable to us as an broken in old pair of shoes. We planned on two things happening: first, that it would jar both our memories on long forgotten details that some how through the planning stage seemed important and second, returning to somewhere that you are not totally familiar with is a good thing to do when you are over fifty.

We vowed that we will now travel each year to an unknown place together as a healthy thing to keep mentally nimble (and it sure beats learning Chinese or doing crossword puzzles.) The unknown, the piecing together and non-predictable is a healthy silent partner as we all age.

Lobster Salad

LobsterSaladClose I am in Cape Cod today, on vacation with my husband’s extended family. Yesterday it was my turn to make dinner, and I envisioned a gorgeous piece of broiled bluefish. I made the fatal mistake of sharing this vision with my in-laws.

“Bluefish? Really?” said my brother-in-law Scott, as if I’d announced I was braising a hedgehog. He begged for an alternative. My sister-in-law Julie chimed in: “But please, no salmon. Too fishy. Or tilapia. It tastes like dust.”

When I suggested shrimp or scallops, my niece Katy made a barfing sound. Cousin Noah let it be known that hates halibut and Suzie is sick of sole. Bette said flounder was too boring, and octopus was a non-starter since Uncle Johnny won’t eat things with more than four legs. Aunt Sue won’t eat squid, having been traumatized by “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” as a child.

I tried to appeal on the basis of geography. “What about cod?” I said. “In honor of our current location?” I was greeted with blank stares. “Okay, well, catfish?”

“Ew. Bottom-feeders,” said my daughter Nora.

Food, Family and Memory