Imagine a table: aunts, grandmothers, sisters-in-law, cousins—all gathered together, all making the same dish. This time-consuming dish, made by filling grape leaves with a rice-based mixture, is called "sarma".For the women in my large family—who had migrated from east to west—preparing sarma was a wonderful excuse to gather.While rolling the sarma, they would often talk about aching arms from too much cleaning, about the racist tendencies of the majority, menstrual cramps, menopause, waxing, i...

When a restaurant owner offers the flavors of their homeland far from home, is their role only to serve good food?

If your relationship with cooking and food isn't too bad, your answer is likely the refrigerator. We all consume something every day, to varying extents. Sometimes, even when we're not hungry, an inexplicable force compels us to get up, open the refrigerator door, and stare blankly at its contents. Other times, we reach for the most unlikely items and start

As I enter the eighth month of living in my new country, separated from my homeland, family, and loved ones, the weather here begins to cool, and I find myself drawn to exploring traditional winter recipes. Among the list of local winter sweets, the one I’m most eager to try is called Imbuljuta tal-Qastan, which translates to “Chestnut Christmas Drink of Malta.” Though it’s referred to as a drink, this recipe appears on lists of

It’s a sunny afternoon, and I’m sitting in a café chatting with John. John P. Portelli is a poet and author who retired as a philosophy professor from the University of Toronto. For John, retirement is merely a term on official documents. His mind, ever-active, is a marvel of clarity woven with humour and conscience. He has authored numerous works of fiction and poetry. After signing a copy of his poetry collection “Here Was”—translated into Turkish—for my father, a lifelong devotee of poetry, h...