![]() She’d listen to the recipe and correct it for me. They became a prolific team, bouncing ideas off each other and tweaking recipes as they went. He would call his mom and read the recipe to her over the phone. So every week, he made a new recipe from the book. But I wanted the recipes to taste like my mom’s.” "I had a cookbook I got on one of my trips home from the ladies’ auxiliary of the St. His imagination kicked into overdrive, drawing out a desire to re-create those cherished childhood memories through his tastebuds. “So there I was in white-bread America, where there was not very much cultural diversity, and I started to write about my background.”ĭreams of his family’s home on Monroe Street in Toledo, as well as his father’s store, provided Geha with instant inspiration. It’s like a fish describing water,” he said. “For me, I had to get out of my heritage in order to see it. The cultural differences in the heart of the Midwest were eye-opening. ![]() Geha began writing about his heritage when he took his first teaching job in Springfield, Missouri. Geha did not grow up learning his mother’s recipes, but he recalls how she was usually in the kitchen. It took a distance for Geha to appreciate his heritage “There's so much disconnection in immigrating.” “It makes you feel connected again,” he said. More: Photos: Downtown Ames Farmers Market and Food Truck Showdownįood really is like a shortcut to home, Geha said So we were used to buying our bread, which we did from The Armenian also.” "In the old country, it was too expensive for fuel to heat the oven up, so people would make their bread and take it to the corner bakery, and the baker would throw the loaves in for you. “He would also have Syrian bread because very few people baked at home," Geha said. The Armenian would open the side panel of his truck and people would line up to buy ingredients such as orange blossom water, pressed apricots and olives similar to those found in the old country. “He would come down in a truck from Detroit every week.” “We in Little Syria would get the ingredients that we needed from a man called The Armenian,” Geha said. Tracking down the proper spices and flavors often found in Lebanese dishes was rather tricky. The grocery store was located on the edge of an area known as Little Syria. They were colorful, interesting people, but some were a little dangerous.” “I write in the book of some sketchy people there. Then we moved to a neighborhood downtown on Monroe Street,” Geha said. The family lived in the upstairs apartment until Joe was 6 years old. The Geha family settled in Toledo, Ohio, where Joe’s father opened a grocery store. Joe Geha's family bought Lebanese ingredients from The Armenian The family eventually made their way further inland, aimed at the Midwest. Upon arrival at Ellis Island 15 days later, all passengers were required to undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine to prevent the spread of typhoid fever, which was rampant in Lebanon at the time. His father orchestrated bribes to secure their passage on the Vulcania. Joe's family − which also included his brother and sister − immigrated to the United States when he was two, leaving Beirut after World War II. More: Good Neighbor's second annual block party is Sunday in Ames “A way of understanding the world is through stories.” “Stories are the basis of the food and the recipes that go with them,” Geha told the Ames Tribune. Writing about recipes and how they were created is a seamless combination of his greatest interests. “Rishta, our last meal in the old country, is served traditionally to observe fresh starts, like the setting off on a journey or the occasion of a child’s first tooth,” Geha writes as a preface to the recipe.Īuthor, painter and a retired Iowa State creative writing professor, Geha settles into a living room chair in the Ames home he shares with his wife of 33 years, Fern Kupfer. It’s storytelling that readers can really savor. The book explores the rich history of his family’s emigration from Lebanon in 1946 along with his mother’s recipes folded in. In Arabic, the soup is called Rishta and its recipe is the first one featured in Geha’s new book, “Kitchen Arabic.” Lentil soup with chicken simmers in the kitchen, filling Joe Geha’s home with mouth-watering aromas of coriander, onions, garlic and leeks.
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