Go back

Lebanese food traditions

Closeup colour photo of kitchen. A bottle of California style grape leaves on the right is the focus of the image. To the left of the bottle you can see a plate covered in a dish towel with some grape leaves drying on it. In the background you can see a cookbook and kitchen utensils on a counter, and a stove.

Photo: Jar of grape leaves used for the Lebanese dish stuffed grape leaves. 2022. Source: Heritage NL.

Recorded audio interview with Wyatt Hirschfeld Shibley completed by Natalie Dignam for Heritage NL.

TRANSCRIPT:
I’ve been just talking with them I guess about the traditions that kind of help keep them connected to feeling Lebanese. And the way that folklore you know helps kind of continue that ethnic identity and express it and yeah so the biggest thing, the most universal thing definitely has been food. And I can say for say my own family that is very much the same. That’s the biggest thing. It is kind of, it’s kind of the thing really like for my family. But then a lot of people I talked to even the people who are maybe less connected to that identity like they just kind of grew up in a bit of a Lebanese-Newfoundland home but maybe they don’t strongly identify with it. They still would have grown up eating some of those dishes. So definitely food, cooking it, eating it, growing it. So people I’ve talked to – now this isn’t universal but I have found some really prolific gardeners in this community either people themselves or say when you know they’ve talked to me about their parents who have grown things that you know if you have done any gardening in Newfoundland feel kind of wild that anyone has been able to do here. There is a woman I interviewed who grows grape vines and she is not the only one who does. I know of three or maybe four people who grow grape vines outside not in a greenhouse in Newfoundland. She might be the only one who gets grapes but most of them are grown for the leaves so that you can make stuffed grape leaves which is a fairly well known Lebanese snack. So that would be one. Also some people who either grow or say they remember their parents growing kousa which is a Syrian squash Lebanese people pick it when it is really young. But it is a kind of almost like summer squash, maybe related to zucchini. But yeah all kinds of things but the grape vines have been the most interesting thing to me personally. Growing those outside here, yeah.