Cheesebread

why i can't stop talking about global conflict while i'm cooking. a bit from my book & a couple of recipes, only one of which is mine. every place is full of people.

A fun thing to know about me is that once I ate the same thing for lunch every single day for two years, when I was sixteen and seventeen: flat Lebanese cheese bread folded in two, soft, salty, pliable. Sometimes za’atar, mostly not. Always warm. Every day. This is of course a credit to the constitution of teenagers, and the faithful constancy of neurodiversity; but it is also a tribute to manakish specifically, and Lebanese baking in general.

I have written already, not very long ago, about writing about food while bad things happen. Specifically, I have written about writing about Middle Eastern food while bad things happen in the Middle East.

Food is feeling; feeling is place. Place is politics.