You Know How you Could do That?

Everyone in my family is a food lover. My dad is (mostly) Lebanese, and my mom is (mostly) Italian, with large families on both sides of the equation. Any gathering of the tribes included tables that buckled under the weight of homemade stuffed grape leaves and kibbeh on the Middle Eastern side – or homemade lasagna, meatballs, and cannoli at the Italian family reunions.

My family is happiest together in the kitchen. Cooking and the associated eating are the activities on which we all agree. We might go toe to toe on, say, the inherent value of my tattoos, but get us around a stove or a cutting board, and we are the very definition of collaboration. We move in a smooth rhythm, and the right ingredients seem to appear out of thin air. Suddenly, the clove of garlic I need has been perfectly minced, and somehow, the parsley is already chopped.