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.

My mother, having fallen down the stairs and broken her leg on June 8, has left the hospital and moved to something called a Sub-Acute Rehab Facility. I believe, based on keen observation, that that means “not as bad as being in the hospital but we will still wake you in the night to take your vitals and you will still have a roommate who watches game shows all day long at a volume calculated to shatter Plexiglas.” It also means that the food is still bad.

My mother, as I believe I have mentioned many times, is a superb cook, and even in these days of waning appetite and dietary restrictions she still appreciates and desires sophisticated and well-prepared food. At the rehab facility, I joined her for lunch yesterday and witnessed both menu choices: roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy or Chicken a la King and mashed potatoes. Cubes of carrots were served as a side, and dessert was a gelatinous apple filling sered in tiny pie shells. It was not inspiring. I watched my mother pick at her food, keenly aware that she needs to eat, particularly to eat protein, in order to build and keep her strength up so that she can participate in physical therapy and go home. It wasn’t looking good.

Last night my husband Rob and I attended a meeting of the East Lansing City’s Planning Commission (because we know how to have a good time) which started at 7:00. These meetings, or at least the part with which we are concerned, usually end by 8:30 or 9:00, so we left Sam Home Alone. He is 11, we were literally 3 minutes away, and there were neighbors home.

The meeting lasted until after 10:00, and because we are very bad parents, and really wanted to be there when the vote on our issue was taken (we lost, by the way), we didn’t get home until after 10:30. (Before you call Child Protective Services, I should add that it was not a school night because he is on spring break). in the midst of getting the dogs out, making wild promises of what we “owed” him for abandoning him, and checking phone messages, Rob noticed an empty Angel Food Cake box in the kitchen,  and a sink full of dirty dishes. The kitchen table was also suspiciously sticky.

Daddy was everything to us. He was a lot to many and my mother's whole world. He moved from Los Angeles to a small southern town in Georgia when he was 16 years old and met my mother shortly after. Mom was 15 and the rest is history. He left us, very unexpectedly on an early Spring night. Nothing could have prepared me for it. He was the pied piper, the epitome of a fine man, the definition of love, all the reason I turned out to be me. He was kind and gentle, inspired me every day to see the good in people. He inspired the adventure in me. It's why I grew up in a small southern town on a cotton and pecan farm and have seen so much of the world that most folks will never see.

I always packed a cooler on my way home to the farm and took Daddy things he just couldn't grow on the farm. Italian prosciutto, spicy tuna roles from my favorite sushi place, homemade fennel sausage lasagna from Bacchanalia (one of two, 5 star Michelin restaurants in Atlanta.) He liked tiny blueberries from Vermont from Whole Foods to put on his Raisin Bran every morning. And the late summer 'wild king salmon' I got at the fish market. I brought him Peach Bread from Breadwinners Bakery. The finest olive oil and balsamic vinegar from Italy. I always brought him several boxes of Lily O'Brien's sticky toffee chocolates from Ireland along with a loaf of local soda bread. He loved the whole cranberry sauce Amy turned me on to from the LA Farmer's Market.