About Me
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Recently, I was asked by my three nieces, Lauren, Nicole, and Evelyn, if they could learn their Teta’s (grandma's) traditional Middle Eastern recipes. I had no clue where to start. In the spirit of preserving our tradition and culture, I decided to take on the enormous task of perfecting and learning how to teach my mother’s recipes. As I started this cooking adventure, all the traditions and stories came back to me.
For me, personally, it was my mother’s (Salwa), and both my grandmothers’ (Farha and Helen) cooking. Growing up, I would watch the “ladies”, as we would call them, cook all day to make meals happen. The kitchen was the Arab Woman’s playground. The metallic sound of pots and pans, boiling water, sizzling vegetables, and the smell of spices. All of our cultural culinary history was right there in front of me.
The meals they made were what everyone looked forward to every night. The smells and sounds of the cooking during the day were a prelude of what’s to come in the evening. As the sun sets, the entire family of brothers, sisters, uncles and children would sit together at the table. Everyone would talk about their triumphs, losses, and struggles. The meals would come out one by one, food was shared, and dessert was always guaranteed. With every dish, the ladies would say “eat with serenity”.
The ladies would tell a story about the history of each dish. Their recipes came from the places and traditions that my family made their own as they moved throughout the Middle East. Meals are a big deal in our tradition. Food was the only constant in my life that defined where I come from. This traditional food, passed down from generation to generation, was my way of discovering our history. It was the stories behind the meals, where they come from, who taught whom, that were most captivating. These traditions, culture, and food from Mardin, Aleppo, and Damascus, traveled with my family through their journey and eventually were brought with them to the United States.
Born in Syria then moving to the USA during my teenage years has given me an incredibly unique perspective on cultures. Growing up learning one culture, then adopting another during my teenage years, left me with a combination of the two. One thing I noticed about both cultures was that food was an integral part of each. Sharing a meal was a way we shared stories, developed hopes, celebrated achievements, shed tears, and even fell in love. Food plays an integral part of the human experience. It defines who you are, where you’re from, and tells your story.
I am excited to share these meals with you and I hope that they can take you back in time, as they did for me. Though I am not a chef, I am now one of the “ladies” and the kitchen has now become my playground. I originally made these videos for my nieces, family, and friends, but I have decided to share these for anyone who wants to hear our story.
I decided to call this page “Eat with Serenity” because it is one of the few memories that I will never forget. This was the phrase that I would hear before I would dive into every delicious dish. For my 10-year-old self, it was heaven on earth. It is one thing to talk about our history, but it’s another to experience it with your senses. Eat with Serenity.
Stay Gold,
Tania Bashoura