About Me

My family moved from Michigan to mid-west China almost two years ago, when my husbands job asked us to relocate for an overseas assignment.  The second day we arrived I decided we were ready to move into our new home in Chongqing.  I was both excited and apprehensive, and the first thing I did was hit the local supermarket.  

I walked by the tanks of live fish ready to be scooped out, scaled, cleaned and handed over to the customer; passed the live chickens, ducks, pigeons and rabbits stacked in cages behind a glass wall, also available to select for dinner.  When I reached the spice isles I thought all I had to do was pick out the spices I was familiar with.  After all, the spices really make the dish.  I grabbed a scoop of a brownish spice from the first bin and sniffed.  It was not a spice I recognized.  I tried again,even though my sense of smell was numbed, scooping out spices and sniffing in a desperate attempt to pinpoint the familiar ones l could use like nutmeg, allspice, cumin, coriander and such.  The only one I could recognize was cinnamon!  I was devastated and discouraged, but I vowed to explore my surroundings until I found the ingredients and tools I needed in this sprawling city of thirty million.

My goal is to recreate the dishes that give my family the taste of home.  I wanted to recreate the authentic Lebanese cuisine I grew up with in North America and continued to cook in my own home.  Being from a large family, food was a major way to connect.  In this site I will present recipes that have been handed down for generations, recipes that have become family favorites, and recipes that I discovered here in China and in my travels.