Lebanon Food Quotes

In Lebanon, home to well over a million Syrian refugees, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) decided to use its limited ‘winterization’ funds to pay cash transfers to vulnerable families living above 500 metres altitude. These were unconditional, although recipients were told they were intended for buying heating supplies. Recipient families were then compared with a control group living just below 500 metres. The researchers found that cash assistance did lead to increased spending on fuel supplies, but it also boosted school enrolment, reduced child labour and increased food security.55 One notable finding was that the basic income tended to increase mutual support between beneficiaries and others in the community, reduced tension within recipient families, and improved relationships with the host community. There were significant multiplier effects, with each dollar of cash assistance generating more than $2 for the Lebanese economy, most of which was spent locally.

The night before, Um-Nadia came over with her small wooden box stuffed with handwritten recipes, dishes Um-Nadia hadn't prepared or eaten in the thirty-five years since she and Mireille had left Lebanon. Some were recipes for simple, elegant dishes of rice pilafs and roasted meats, others were more exotic dishes of steamed whole pigeons and couscous or braised lambs' brains in broth. And they discussed ingredients and techniques until late in the night. Um-Nadia eventually fell asleep on the hard couch in the living room, while Sirine's uncle dozed across from her in his armchair. But Sirine stayed up all night, checking recipes, chopping, and preparing. She looked up Iraqi dishes, trying to find the childhood foods that she'd heard Han speak of, the sfeehas- savory pies stuffed with meat and spinach- and round mensaf trays piled with lamb and rice and yogurt sauce with onions, and for dessert, tender ma'mul cookies that dissolve in the mouth. She stuffed the turkey with rice, onions, cinnamon, and ground lamb. Now there are pans of sautéed greens with bittersweet vinegar, and lentils with tomato, onion, and garlic on the stove, as well as maple-glazed sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin soufflé.

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;         they flow between the hills;     11 they give drink to every beast of the field;         the wild donkeys quench their thirst.     12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;         they sing among the branches.     13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;         the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.     14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock         and plants for man to cultivate,     that he may bring forth food from the earth         15 and wine to gladden the heart of man,     oil to make his face shine         and bread to strengthen man's heart.     16 The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly,         the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.     17 In them the birds build their nests;         the stork has her home in the fir trees.     18 The high mountains are for the wild goats;         the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.     19 He made the moon to mark the seasons; [1]         the sun knows its time for setting.     20 You make darkness, and it is night,         when all the beasts of the forest creep about.     21 The young lions roar for their prey,         seeking their food from God.     22 When the sun rises, they steal away         and lie down in their dens.     23 Man goes out to his work         and to his labor until the evening.     24 O LORD, how manifold are your works!         In wisdom have you made them all;         the earth is full of your creatures.     25 Here is the sea, great and wide,         which teems with creatures innumerable,         living things both small and great.     26 There go the ships,         and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. [2]     27 These all look to you,         to give them their food in due season.     28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;         when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.     29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;         when you take away their breath, they die         and return to their dust.     30 When you send forth your Spirit, [3] they are created,         and you renew the face of the ground.     31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;

We are not afraid of meat or fat, but we are afraid of unnecessary ingredients and over-complicated technique. Put another way, the food on the plate is proud to be there without disguise or embellishment. And if you find the recipes in this book to be so diverse that they defy coherency as a collection, that’s fine too. Just think of Tuesday Nights Mediterranean as good home cooking from Gibraltar to Lebanon. A votre santé!

Every time he returned from a trip to Lebanon, I wanted to sit him down and discuss, in detail, every bite of food he’d eaten. He was happy to oblige, but nothing he described, even the elaborate meals with family and more family, made his eyes go wide like the man’oushe. It’s street corner bakery food, he said. you get it wrapped in paperand off you go. They’d stopped on a whim because they were hungry and needed a snack, and it turned out to be the best Lebanese food he’d ever put in his mouth. The flatbread was chewy, but with a crisp exterior. It was blistered (okay, my word, not his) and warm, topped with za’atarorcheese, filled with tomatoes and pink pickled turnips and mint and folded over on itself. I had to stop him. I couldn’t take it. Breads like this were not unfamiliar to me; I’d had them before. But those were breads that came in plastic bags. No matter how fresh they say the bread is, it’s still bread that you get in a plastic bag. Warmfrom-the-oven man’oushe is something breaddreams are made of, something you are only going to get from your own kitchen.

India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justified in having them. Soon others will, too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I’m trying to be eclectic here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan … and why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs. And when all our larders are bursting with shiny bombs and our bellies are empty (deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly competitive and prices fall, not just governments, but anybody who can afford it can have their own private arsenal—businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer (like myself). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite. We can get our kicks by threatening each other. It’ll be like bungee jumping when you can’t rely on the bungee cord, or playing Russian roulette all day long. An additional perk will be the thrill of Not Knowing What to Believe. We can be victims of the predatory imagination of every green card–seeking charlatan who surfaces in the West with concocted stories of imminent missile attacks. We can delight at the prospect of being held to ransom by every petty troublemaker and rumormonger, the more the merrier if truth be told, anything for an excuse to make more bombs. So you see, even without a war, we have a lot to look forward to.

Unlike Syria, Mount Lebanon was not a land with a diverse topography, but mostly mountainous. Fawwaz Traboulsi wrote that the amount of cultivable land in Mount Lebanon was four percent of the total surface, or approximately forty-nine square miles. Of this area, about twenty-two square miles, or nearly half, was cultivated with toot shami, the Damascus mulberry tree.12 One variety of this tree produces a large, edible white berry, the other a black berry. The primary produce obtained from this tree was not the berries for human consumption, but its leaves on which silkworms fed.13 Traboulsi’s study indicates that the maximum land area available for food crop cultivation in Mount Lebanon was twenty-seven square miles,