Food, Family and Memory

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.

As my daughters will attest, I am not a cook. 

Indeed, the only thing I have ever cooked is brown rice and boiled eggs (you notice I said boiled and not scrambled or poached or anything remotely requiring any cooking skills) so it was a testament to my attempts to be fearless, that the first time I cooked anything more complicated than brown rice or a boiled egg, was on national television on Martha Stewart’s show...

My father always said the worst thing about getting old was watching your friends die.  Second worst was diminished distance off the tee.  Now that I’m over sixty, I can attest he was right on both counts.  Nonetheless, even death and the rituals that accompany it, somehow never fail to offer up a little comic relief.  On the other hand, there’s nothing funny about losing yardage. 

Of course, the memorial services for friends in show business are always filled with laughter because on those occasions you have talented, funny people telling stories about other talented, funny people.   However, non-pro deaths offer their own moments of black comedy.  As cases in point, I offer the following two examples.

After my mother died, my father, my sister, her ten-year-old son and I went en masse to buy her tombstone at a place called Swink Monument.  I have no recollection exactly why we picked them, but price may have been involved. Their office was in a mobile home surrounded by a concrete slab, on which various markers were displayed.  (In case you haven’t guessed, this is in North Carolina).  My father, following through on his philosophy to the end, picked neither the grandest stone nor the plainest.  Then, we went inside to fill out the paperwork, except for my nephew who remained out doors, skateboarding through the monuments.

Dotsie Swink, the heavy-set woman who was assisting us, took down the basic information, then asked a question I’ve never heard before or since:  You want slick on top?

Before there was IHOP, there was Gwynn’s. 

When I was a kid in suburban Teaneck, New Jersey, it was always a treat to go for Sunday brunch with my family at Gwynn’s on Teaneck Road.  Gwynn’s seemed swanky and grown-up to me.  Outside, it was painted white brick, and inside it was cool and darkish, with comfy booths.  My mother would order her coffee, and the cream came in tiny, glass pitchers with little round cardboard pull-tabs on top.  She only used a drop and then gave me the supreme pleasure of letting me drink the rest of the cream from its miniature jar.  Sometimes, if she had a second cup, I got another taste of the thick, heavenly liquid that would contribute to the need for Lipitor years later.  Compared to my very picky little sister, who ate only cream cheese and jelly, I was “a good eater” with a passion for pancakes, waffles and French toast.