From the time I was in nursery school until I graduated from high school, I never spent a summer in my home state of Michigan. Most summers we went to Maine, but for three summers, we headed not to the rocky, Atlantic coast, but across that ocean to Europe. The middle summer when I was fifteen, we explored England, Italy and France deeply and passionately. My mother, possibly the best trip planner ever to draw breath, spent nearly a year before the trip selecting the perfect bed & breakfasts, auberges and pensiones for us.
The things we wanted to see were an odd mixture of The Things One Sees in Europe (The Coliseum, The Louvre) and things my father wanted to see (the famous “Black Madonna” of Urbino). A consummate networker long before the days of the internet, my mother communicated her charm and enthusiasm via weightless, pale blue aerogrammes that appeared in the mailbox all year, one memorably addressed to “La Famiglia Graham;” by the time we boarded the plane for Frankfort in June, deposits were made, and an assortment of feather beds, duvets and hand-embroidered pillow cases awaited our travel weary bodies.
We fell hard for Florence, so hard that my mother cancelled our reservations in Venice and booked an extra week. Our “insider” guide was a colleague of my father’s, an Italian professor named Bob (and a “real” Italian), the leader of a group of Michigan State University students studying in Florence for the summer session. Bob had rented a villa at the top of an impossibly steep hill lined with Cypress trees to which we ascended one afternoon for bread, cheese, olives, and a plate of salami, soppressata, and prosciutto.
My sister and I were raised in a house with two working parents. When we were younger, our father worked nights while our mother worked days. This schedule left our dad on dinner duty. Luckily, having been raised by a working mother himself, our father already had cooking skills in place. My mother, who didn’t know the difference between olive oil and Karo syrup, wrote a note to my dad’s mom thanking her for teaching him how to cook. My mother claims it was Gloria Steinem’s influence that led her to delegate my dad to kitchen duty, but really it was because he was the only one who knew how to “wear the apron” in the house.
Sitoo means grandmother in Arabic, a deeply respectful title.
When my oldest son left for his senior year of college in September, he was leaving the comfort (or more likely uncomfort) of on-campus life and trading it for a 4-bedroom apartment. No
longer able to rely on cafeteria food, he was going to have to cook for
himself. Over the years I had taught him a few basic things about cooking but
never really gave him anything resembling real lessons. I guess I was just
hoping he was going to pick it up by osmosis. Though he has watched me cook
over the years and picked up some basics I wanted to give him a little more
formal culinary send-off. Starting in early August I began to think about what
he liked to eat and what specific skills he would need to cook those dishes. We
spent a few days going over the basics – heat control, knife techniques, etc. I
also knew that there were certain basic tools and ingredients he would need for
his kitchen. Stuffed into his luggage were three knives, a spatula, frying pan
and pot. Finally, I drew up a few basic recipes and cooking techniques that I
emailed to him. The result was a sort of mini- cooking "Cooking 101."
