Favorite Food Essay Of Love
Janet Denzel
English instructor 25 years, secondary and post secondary. Monthly OP-ED contributor for The Galveston Daily News (my local paper), Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction Award, among others. Published poet. Mother of four adult children, one of whom is in heaven.
On those Sunday afternoons, the party began when his brothers, sister, and my cousins descended upon the house, everyone speaking Arabic energetically. My very southern grandmother escaping to the sunroom, the chaos and the Middle Eastern music she hated that sounded like nails on a chalkboard or sobbing depending on how you were feeling that day. I loved it. I learned how to make a great scotch and water, a high ball in those days, and served it round the table to my animated relatives smoking endless Pall Malls, discussing some wayward relative in the Old Country, or politics here and there.
My grandfather was the patriarch of our family, coming over from Lebanon to New York in 1914 at the age of fourteen, alone, to make his fortune importing Turkish and Persian rugs sold to the finest families across the North and South. After his business became prosperous, he moved his four brothers and three sisters to America. Later, leaving one brother and sister to run the store, he led the family to Texas, stopping in Virginia to drop off rugs already ordered, staying just long enough to find his blue-eyed red headed wife.
The story goes, he and one of his brothers were introduced to two young women while dining with clients. He took one look at her, and it was love at first sight. He wooed her with fine dinners and dancing, all the while painting a picture of a lavish life in the bustling city of Dallas. The third night he closed the deal, took her to her parents to pack, bade farewell, and never looked back. She, soft spoken and only eighteen compared to his dashing thirty-one. They remained married fifty years, raising two daughters, one with severe disabilities. He traveled a lot selling rugs, but when he was home, the music and food of the Middle East were the parenthesis that kept us together.
This was our world sewn into the fabric of being an American in the 60s, where our mixed heritage caused some to whisper while in the grocery store or church. But we learned to pay no attention, we shared the rhythm of family that nourished our souls and bodies. Sundays, the bedrock of my imagination.
Nice piece.
Any thoughts on seedless vs. traditional w-melons? I have bought the smaller seedless ones (really, they're not seedless, though, the seeds are just smaller, white and softer) and found them lacking in flavor.
I believe the long, torpedo-shaped w-melons have better flavor vs. the newer-fangled rounder, smaller "seedless". Thoughts?
And then there's this:
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Love it..and I love watermelon! If you ask me what cravings I have...watermelon is on the top of the list. I had the sweetest most delicious melon this 4th of July and it so happened to be seedless. It was like eating cake! FYI...I was curious if watermelons were nutritious as well as delicious..and come to find out they are! Great source of potassium! Who knew!
I used to be hard and fast about "real" watermelons, with seeds, mostly because like Jenny said, spitting them is half of the fun. But this year I've found the seedless ones are just as good, so I'm changing my tune. I tried to grow watermelon the last two years, but since Andras and I go through about one a week, I could never keep up. And it's hard to beat the $6.98 a watermelon price tag in Queens!
Anjee, you're right, watermelon is ripe with incredible benefits and nutrients. My favorite? Lycopene, the same potent carotenoid antioxidant that's in tomatoes.
Here's an ode from Mark Twain:
"I know how a prize watermelon looks when it is sunning its fat
rotundity among pumpkin vines and "simblins"; I know how to tell when it is ripe without "plugging" it; I know how inviting it looks when it is cooling itself in a tub of water under the bed, waiting; I know how it looks when it lies on the table in the sheltered great floor space between house and kitchen, and the children gathered for the sacrifice and their mouths watering; I know the crackling sound it makes when the carving knife enters its end, and I can see the split fly along in front of the blade as the knife cleaves its way to the other end; I can
see its halves fall apart and display the rich red meat and the black seeds, and the heart standing up, a luxury fit for the elect; I know how a boy looks behind a yard-long slice of that melon, and I know how he feels; for I have been there."
Sarah,
You got Julia's voice just as Ms. Streep got the whole Julia thing. I knew Julia quite well, and I think she would have liked your piece. Julie had a knack, which you caught, of combining precision with enthusiasm. Keep up the good writing. Don
Over plates of Impossible Burgers and candied yams, Kai and I joked around and recounted our childhoods. It was only after the meal, when she asked how I liked the vegan meat, that I began to consider the question. I was delighted but a little disoriented. I knew I had not eaten animal meat, but nothing about the meal felt vegan either. I appreciated the lightness of the mushroom burger patty, and just how tasty and everyday all of the food was.
Prior to this, my most salient experiences with vegan food were from the dinner parties my white, effective-altruist friend hosted during college. The tofu in the chickpea curry he cooked was always watery, and I pushed chunks of it around my bowl more than I ate it. Most of our mealtime conversations were about the self-sacrifice needed to create a more environmentally, racially and morally just world.
But these new, ethnically specific vegan restaurants in the Bay made me realize that my assumption that Ghanaian cuisine had to have meat was unfounded. Recently, I asked my roommate, Russell, to help me make a vegan version of my favorite dish: peanut soup. This was the dish I always requested from my mom during breaks from boarding school, so nowadays, without asking, I always return home to omo tuo, or rice balls, waiting to be doused in this soup of peanut butter, tomato paste, spices and chicken stock. To make our vegan version, Russell and I used vegetable stock, and we used tempeh in place of the chicken that normally bulks up the soup. To compensate for the lack of meat, we reduced the soup for longer and added more peanut butter.
May 1st is fast approaching, and the time for the high school class of 2019 to make their final college decisions is dwindling. Choosing which college to go to is overwhelming, but the dozens of essays one has to write to merely apply is even more daunting. It also doesn't help when you apply to way too many schools (13 to be exact), nearly all of which want you to outline what makes their school stand out. It was all too easy to get trapped in the cycle of repetitive phrases and "smart-sounding language."
Unlike fellow applicants, I did not have an incredible story to tell, nor an obstacle that I overcame worth a college admission officer's time. What I did have standing behind me was a passion for peanut butter and jelly, the best desserts in New Jersey, and outlandish food gadgets that probably no one needs.
After a few rejections, long college road-trips, and some delicious college cookies as seen in the photo above, I have officially committed to Northeastern University. I am so excited to start the next journey of my education as a Husky. Although my time at Spoon High School comes to a close, Spoon Northeastern awaits.
Growing up, the love I was most familiar with was conditional, toxic, and selfish. It often left me feeling neglected and shamed. I longed to be seen. I wanted someone to love me no matter how I looked, or what I could or could not do. I wanted to be enough. The emotional neglect I had felt for so long turned into an unhealthy need for attention and a quest to find someone who could love me. I chased after a love that would see me, accept me, and make me happy. However, as I experienced many different relationships, I began to discover that the love I sought was not truly what I desired and was often not enough.
I was scared. I had never trusted myself or believed in my own goodness, so I had no idea what the other side of neglect would look like. One step at a time, I pushed back and started to say no to all of the negative voices. One step at a time I let go of the need to be validated and loved by another person. Then I turned to myself and promised that I would never again be my enemy. I knew me the best. I saw myself- truly, and if I could not love this human being standing in front of me, I knew I would never experience true authentic existence and love. For the first time in my life, I finally stood up for myself.
At first loving myself was hard. I experienced different forms of negativity as I started to leave behind toxic relationships with people, work environments, and beliefs. But, one of the biggest things I experienced was loneliness. I had been focused on being enough for everyone but myself for so long that when I began to push back, I pushed out and away, leaving me alone and vulnerable to the unknown. Yet, during this season of loneliness, I found strength in the friends that stood by me and showed me true love, and I found that I was enough for myself.
I used to believe the only kind of fulfilling love was between two people, but, the purest love cannot exist between us until we have learned how to truly love; and, we will never learn true love until we have felt it from and given it unconditionally to the only person we will ever know completely: ourself.
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