Northern Michigan University NMU Commons All NMU Master's Theses Student Works 8-2014 Around the Table Rachel E. Mills Adjunct English Professor, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.nmu.edu/theses Part of the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Mills, Rachel E., "Around the Table" (2014). All NMU Master's Theses. 35. https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/35 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Works at NMU Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in All NMU Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of NMU Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. Around the Table By Rachel Elizabeth Mills THESIS Submitted to Northern Michigan University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Office of Graduate Education and Research May 2014 SIGNATURE APPROVAL FORM “Around the Table” This thesis by Rachel Elizabeth Mills is recommended for approval by the student’s thesis committee in the Department of English and by the Assistant Provost of Graduation Education and Research. Committee Chair: Paul Lehmberg Date First Reader: Dr. Beverly Matherne Date Second Reader: Jim McCommons Date Department Head: Dr. Ray Ventre Date Dr. Brian D. Cherry Assistant Provost of Graduate Education and Research ABSTRACT Around the Table By Rachel Elizabeth Mills This collection of nonfiction essays revolves around concepts of food and home. The essays focus on the universalizing nature of food, both from a personal perspective, and from a diasporic Middle Eastern perspective. In these essays I explore how food unifies and creates communities. The essays range from exploring my own upbringing in rural Upper Michigan, and how food creates bonds within my own family and community, to examining how food creates ties and communities within the Arab diaspora. This collective narrative, in focusing on the communal characteristics surrounding the human need for sustenance, seeks to bring everyone to the table. i Copyright by Rachel Elizabeth Mills 2014 ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Doug and Ruthette Mills, who, along with giving much love and support along the way, fostered in me curiosity about the world and passion for the written word. To my sister, Laurel Mills and my brother Daniel Vogel for circuses, tea parties, forts, picnics and plays. And to Orson Humphrey, for love and listening. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This author would like to thank her thesis director, Paul Lehmberg, who allowed me into the MFA program three months late, who directed my thesis the last semester before retirement, and who taught me so much about my writing. I would also like to thank my reader, Dr. Beverly Matherne, for teaching me so much about writing, for the hugs and kind words, and for helping me find my poetry again. I would also like to thank my reader Jim McCommons, whose no- nonsense editing taught me much over the years. I would also like to thank Dan Gocella, my dear friend, who listened, made me laugh, and was the person whose support and encouragement helped me see the worth of my efforts. I want to thank Jaspal Singh, who taught me theory and to always question, who saw me when no one else did, who befriended, mentored, and loved me—I am truly blessed to have her in my life. I would like to thank Laura Soldner, who taught me so much about what it means to be a good teacher and a good professional, and was always ready with much-needed advice. I would like to thank Dr. Ray Ventre for being a wonderful boss and all around fantastic human being—I would not have come so far if it weren’t for Ray. I want to thank Ahmad Nasser, Maan and Sybil, and the many other wonderful individuals who shared their time and stories with me during my travels in Dearborn, Michigan. I am so blessed that my food writing journey brought me into the orbit of these wonderful people and allowed me to explore the delightful and complicated city that is Arab Dearborn. Thank you to my friends, Alice Jasper, Abbey Palmer, Shailah Pelto and Hillary Snively, who loved me unconditionally through so many difficult and significant times in my life, who iv listened to my writing over the years, and who believed in me, even when I had trouble believing in myself. Thank you to Reid DeRosie, my companion for almost a third of my life. Thank you to Grandma Mills, Grandma Harkness, and Grandpa Harkness—I grew up in your kitchens, surrounded in so much love. And thank you to my extended network of family and friends who have loved and supported me. This thesis follows the format prescribed by the MLA Style Manual and the Department of English. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Preface..............................................................................................................................................8 Remembering Kabobs ....................................................................................................................13 Versatility .......................................................................................................................................23 Coconuts in Winter ........................................................................................................................34 Carnivorous Influences ..................................................................................................................44 Xenia ..............................................................................................................................................54 Winter Night, Accidental Salad .....................................................................................................69 Every Other Sunday .......................................................................................................................81 Harb’s Imports ...............................................................................................................................93 Summer’s Leftovers .....................................................................................................................105 Caviar Criollo...............................................................................................................................115 Mixing ..........................................................................................................................................122 Pomme de Amour ........................................................................................................................131 Winter ..........................................................................................................................................142 Blessings from Strangers .............................................................................................................153 Cardamom ....................................................................................................................................163 Tagliatelle Verdi ..........................................................................................................................172 The Kitchen Dance ......................................................................................................................179 Glossary of Terms ........................................................................................................................183 Work Cited ...................................................................................................................................185 vi Introduction We gather around the table. Voices of those who have come before me burst from the pages of food-smudged tomes. Come into the kitchen , voices whisper in sibilant, papery tones. Everything you’ll ever need to know is here. All the knowledge and history of people and the world. Mythologies of race, religion, war, everything it means to be human and part of a society, everything of this amorphous thing we call “culture”, is in the kitchen. Each utensil, ingredient, cooking method, recipe, meal, is not unique to you, the voices say . The garlic whose papery skin you peel, whose cloves you mash and chop, the sensual undertone to most every meal you cook, has inhabited human cooking spaces for over 6,000 years, little girl. Garlic is the smell on your lover’s breath at the end of a meal. Ancient Egyptians worshipped it, taking it with them to the underworld. Garlic is ward and aphrodisiac. Widows, monks, and children were admonished to avoid garlic because of its stimulating qualities. Garlic is medicine. Garlic is the song that sings long after the meal is over and dishes done. It is the bass note beneath all the other flavors. Garlic is family dinners, whiffs of childhood, a wooden salad bowl laced with lettuce and slicked with olive oil passed from hand to hand around the dinner table. Listen. To eat is to make meaning. “Only food—all-necessary, visible, an external object which becomes internal, and which then turns into the very substance of the eater—could give rise to such a clear yet mysterious and effective ritual” (87) says food anthropologist Margaret Visser, her voice lightly inflected in Afrikaans. “Table manners everywhere insist on the rituals of 1 starting…They represent, both practically and symbolically, an option not to be satisfied with merely assuaging your bodily hunger, but to overlay and control