I am a mother, a wife, a sociolinguist. And a lover of all things culinary.
And I am a true combination of both my parents.
My love for food and cooking comes from my mum. I have memories of her pouring over her issues of Women’s Weekly, finding recipes and adapting them to the ingredients and equipment she had around her. We made “spring rolls” together – using homemade crepes with a traditional crepe batter as the wrappers and a stir-fried veg filling. She was, and still is, curious about different foods, and I learned that curiosity from her. I learned to cook by helping her in the kitchen. When I was 13 or 14, I started cooking (voluntarily) entire meals, typically dinner, for our family of seven (my immediate family of four and my aunt and two cousins who lived with us). What I felt on entering the kitchen at the beginning of an often two-hour long process (no short cuts, no processed food whatsoever) is hard to describe, sheer exhilaration coupled with an incredible sense of peace. True happiness. Is there a word for it? I don’t know. If you know one, let me know?
From my father comes my love for linguistics. When I finished my Bachelor’s in India, in Microbiology, Chemistry, and Zoology, I knew without a doubt that I didn’t want to continue in the sciences. I began to dream of joining culinary school. I joined my parents in Yemen, where they were both English teachers. Got a job, simply because I was the daughter of two incredibly talented teachers, as I explored options for culinary school in the US; it quickly became apparent that financially, it simply wasn’t viable. At the same time, I developed a love for teaching English, and at the end of the year, decided I’d better “learn to do it properly” in order to be gainfully employed elsewhere. I moved to Canada and later the US for school, lots of it.
In trying to help me make peace with the fact that cooking as a career was out, my dad wisely said that I could always be a linguist as well as a cook, but I could never be a cook and a linguist.
And that was almost 30 years ago.
