Hi! I’m Nadia. Its hard to introduce myself without first describing where I came from. Its like that quote “You don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been” I come from a big family with even bigger traditions. Sunday morning family breakfast with Fayruz (the female Frank Sinatra of the Middle East) playing in the background, the smell of mamool cookies ( traditional semolina cookies that are the chocolate chip cookie of the middle east) in preparation for the holidays, meticulously rolling stuffed grape leaves (or watching my Mom do it) or eating sushi at our favorite sushi spot when I come back to visit New Jersey.
Before I had my daugher, Ayla, I began to think about raising a family and the traditions that I would carry. Food is such a central part of my family but I realized I didn’t know how to cook and bake nearly as well as my grandmother and mother and I couldn’t just go to the store and pick things up! With the pressure of perserving these traditions to my unborn children and their children’s children looming over my head, I began to frantically learn different dishes. This involved lots of long distance phone calls to my grandmother to get measurements for her famous food. Getting ex