Joy of Feeding reaches for the heart
Event is a reminder to connect with family and the world through food
Idon’t mean to get heavy on you, but let me expound on the meaning of food. American food writer M. F. K. Fisher once said the sharing of food is an intimate act, one that shouldn’t be indulged in lightly.
But we all know that togetherness at mealtimes in North America is, at best, hit or miss.
The annual celebration of multicultural home cooking, Joy of Feeding, taps the brakes on lives rushing at high velocity. It’s become an annual event at the UBC Farm. This year, it takes place on Sunday from 1 to 4 p. m.
“It’s like three points of a triangle,” says Meeru Dhalwala, chef and co- owner of Vij’s, who founded Joy of Feeding last year. “Cultural cooking, environment and family. Cooking actually strengthens our culture. I don’t believe there’s culture without food.”
She agrees that in North America, the food and family connection isn’t as strong as in other cultures. “We feel as much love but our practical lives have taken a very different turn. We don’t make the time we wish to make for family, or don’t have it. I struggle with it myself,” she says.
And that, she says, is the reason for Joy of Feeding, where she rounds up home cooks from various ethnic backgrounds to cook a family dish.
“Joy of Feeding, for me, is a strong reminder of connecting with family and with the world,” she says.
This year, there are 16 cooks with dishes from their homelands, including Sierra Leone, Ghana, Mexico, Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Goa, Sweden, Italy.
Suzan Anbari’s baked kebbeh, a layered dish with ground meat, bulgur wheat, aromatic spices and nuts, is a national dish in the country.
“If you are fed kebbeh by Suzan, the next time you hear about [ atrocities in] Syria, I’m convinced you’ll have a personal, emotional connection,” says Dhalwala. “Food is a huge connector.”
Anbari has done a three- sixty in her cooking. Growing up, she saw her mother spending more hours cooking for her family than spending time with them. “I vowed to myself that when I grew up, I would buy precooked foods more often,” she says.
When she immigrated to Canada, she really went to town on the abundance of frozen, canned, processed foods — until she found herself overweight with her health compromised. Thus began her interest in nutrition. She recently graduated from a holistic nutritionist program.
“Now,” she says, “with pride, I produce all the wonderful aromas like my mom did during my childhood. The long lingering aroma of different foods cooking together,
producing wonderful gastric juices in our mouths and stomachs, waiting for food to cook — giving it the time it takes to be the wonderful food you know it will be. Good food takes time. Once a person can learn this, there is almost no turning back.”
Canada, she says, is different from Syria, where hospitality and feeding friends, family and strangers is part of the culture. “When you called me, I wanted to invite you over for lunch,” she tells me.
“Feeding people for us is very important. We want to learn about people, see them, have them come over and have a meal together. In Syria, generosity is a big thing. Food is a big thing. It takes so much of our thoughts and energy,” she says.
At Joy of Feeding, she hopes people will indeed stop and talk and ask about the heartbreaking civil strife in her homeland.
As for her kebbeh, she’s “kind of sure” people will like it. “It is yummy. When I invite people over, they always like it,” she says. Kebbeh is a “celebration” food, she says. “It shows
generosity and welcome. It takes time to make and shows you care.”
Another Joy of Feeding volunteer, Joe Rekab, refers to his ethnic background as “Heinz 57.” His mother is Sierra Leonean, his father is English, he grew up in Sierra Leone and Ireland and he married an Indonesian Dutch woman.
In Sierra Leone, it’s customary for families and friends to gather for a meal on weekends. “People finish work at noon on Saturday and we’d gather at someone’s house or at the beach and we’d cook and eat. Here, you tend to have to go through the formality of issuing invitations and planning out the day.”
Rekab, who has been in Canada for 30 years now, says his family of five sits down together most evenings for dinner. “Sunday we have a formal meal together,” he says.
At Joy of Feeding, he’ll be serving jollof rice: a staple for those Saturday or Sunday Sierra Leone get- togethers. “It’s believed by some to be the origin of Cajun jambalaya,” says Rekab, who is a partner in a construction cost
consulting firm. In fact, jollof is very much like jambalaya. In Sierra Leone, they cook the chicken whole but here, he cuts it into smaller pieces.
Dhalwala says Joy of Feeding involves local ingredients bought from local farmers. “My pet peeve with a lot of food events is that farmers end up donating but don’t get much marketing benefit.” Proceeds from the $ 50- per- person ticket sales go to programs run at the UBC Farm, including a children’s learning garden, aboriginal community kitchen, farm market, sustainable agriculture courses and research.
Tickets are available at Choices Markets or www. brownpapertickets. com.