Lebanese Hospitality

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"Are we having someone over for dinner?"

"No," replies my mother. I stare at her dumbfounded. She has cooked over four dishes, each a complete meal in itself. She is working on the fifth, complains a little about being tiresome and places herself back into her cooking mode, and zones out whilst creating the best tasting Middle-Eastern food that could possibly come out of a home kitchen. 

It has always been this way in my household. Each breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack time, I am taken on a guilt trip as I indulge in the heavenly food that my mother cooks. I momentarily think of all of the third world countries whose inhabitants will never see even a quarter of this much food in their lives, let alone ever taste it. It saddens me that we in the westernmost civilisation have experiences so natural to us and so distant and surreal to others, yet we take them for granted. 

When I reflect on some of these Middle-Eastern cuisines, I think myself overly critical and unappreciative. I, most of the time, criticise my mother's repetitive choices in cooking. A number of times, I have tried to cook different things myself only to end up with the watered down and tasteless version of what I had initially had in mind in terms of a meal, and it is only then that I understand the struggles of a motherly chef. To conjure up three different types of meals on a daily basis whilst sticking mostly to your cultural dishes can prove rather difficult. Somehow, my mother always managed to cook something extraordinarily unique and amazing in taste each time, sometimes creating foods that smell so superb that they, with a sense of immediacy, wake me from my insomnia-driven slumbers. 

Lebanese portions are infinite. Forget the protagonist from The Perks of Being a Wallflower and his group of close friends, the amount of food on a Lebanese person's place is legitimately infinite. It is never-ending and despite their pleas of stopping, Lebanese people cannot eat any less than every other family member, and every other family member consumes a lot of food. This is partially the reason as to why I am more fluffier than ever, as of late.

However, in saying this, I do not think that, since I have been living this way for twenty-two years now, I can ever change portion sizes or be satisfied with one mere plate of food, sitting inside it one mere food type. And even though my horoscope claims that I am one for balance, I think there is a bigger Lebanese side to me, which literally means that I most likely will always tip the scales.