The petite woman, about 75
with a cloud of gray curls, opens the screen door to a small back patio filled
with pots and boxes and vines. She points out lettuce, tomato plants, and a
tangle of sweet peas that just haven’t blossomed yet. A grape vine winds around
the fence at the back wall; she uses the leaves to make dolmas. “The ones you
can find in the store,” she says, scrunching her nose, “none of them are good.”
Anita moved to Philadelphia
from Lebanon when she was 15. She’s lived in South Philly ever since. We struck
up a conversation in a grocery store one day and, after our excitement over a
shared love of Lebanese yogurt, agreed to get together for a meal. She invited
me to her home (which happens to be four blocks from mine) for lunch.
“Mostly we do vegetables
and grains for lunch,” she says, “Meat is like a Sunday treat.” She’ll make
lentils and rice, or ‘chi chi beans’ (chickpeas), or, especially in the summer,
bulgur tabbouli. “My mom always told me: always
start with an onion,” she says. Whether it’s finely chopped in salad,
caramelized or sautéed in a stew, it should be the base of almost any dish.
Today, Anita made stew with green beans, tomato, “And I add Vidalia onion to the
dish and let it cook with the vegetables.” She peeks under the lid and stirs
with a wooden spoon. It’s still not done; she likes the beans way past al dente.
Along with the yogurt her
mother used to make every week, there are a few dishes Anita misses from her
childhood. “In Lebanon we used to eat squid and escargot,” she remembers. “After
the first rain in October the escargot would come out of hiding,” she scuttles
her fingertips across the counter, “They would come into the field like little
soldiers.” She’d collect them and take them home for her mother to cook. “My
mom would make a sauce with tahini and lemon and olive oil,” she tilts her head
back, like she can still summon that exact flavor. “I would wrap mine in pita
because I didn’t really want to taste the snail,” she laughs. “But I loved that lemony sauce.”
Anita took the 30-day trip
to the US with her mom on an Egyptian ship. The ticket cost $800; she still
remembers. She started working as soon as she arrived. Her first job, which she
kept through high school, was at Superior Jewelers on Jewelry Row. She made displays for traveling salesmen, puncturing holes in cardboard or
satin and fastening necklaces and rings.
She worked without benefits and with low pay. “It probably took me six
months to make a hundred dollars,” she says.
In those days, she’d eat
pie a la mode for lunch on her way to work. “When I first got here, I was
enamored with junk food,” she laughs. Today, she’s very conscious about her
health. Besides the onion rule, she forgoes her mother’s old clarified butter
and extra salt habits – Anita took care of her after an open-heart surgery
and until her death last year.
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| Ouzi at King Tut’s |
I brought Ouzi (a
Mediterranean special occasion dish of spiced lamb and rice with nuts and
raisins served in a pastry pocket) and labneh from a Middle Eastern restaurant
for Anita to try. She was a bit put off by the olive oil drizzled over the
yogurt (“We would never do that,”), but somehow we still managed to work our
way through most of the container.
I walked home from Anita’s
carrying a warm Tupperware full of leftovers and two stunning magenta peonies
she clipped from her garden. It’s nice getting to know the neighbors.
