TOP SECRET RECIPE & BLURB

Blurb from a book I’m writing…

There was a childcare where my mom, with the little English she had learned, inquired about a job. She was finally hired, mostly because the children were attracted to her like alphabet magnets on a refrigerator. Before we knew it, she was running her own childcare.

In the summers we would return home, often with more kids in tow, white fans around the house and my mother in the kitchen creating smells only the cooking gods bestowed access to. I can see her now, standing at the grill in her galley kitchen flipping skewers of thick thighs marinated for hours in onions, lemon juice, turmeric, and saffron.

“Nahar Hazereh" (lunch is ready).

We would burst into the kitchen, our hair still dripping wet from swimming, water running down our summer-darkened skin like the juice of the tender kabobs. She put plates in front of us and scooped clouds of basmati, with a pat of butter melting in the middle the way snow does in the sun.

And then came the kabob, each of us receiving a plentiful portion because her servings mirrored her giant heart. We became animals, shoveling food into our mouths, as if we had waited an entire summer for a successful kill. No longer self-conscious as a stranger in a far-off land, but at home again, in our Oregon kitchen surrounded by blond-haired children who fell in love with our Iranian culture with meals my mother served. Filled to the edges with rice and my mother’s love, leaving me content once again.