Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm Kate Teller's Senior Director and your host for this episode.

My mom was one of six siblings, descendants of Lebanese immigrants who landed in Erie, Pennsylvania.

A few years after their mother, Minona, died, the siblings decided to get together in my uncle's backyard for a weekend spent cooking

and sharing the food they had been raised on. On a whim, at the last minute, my aunt printed

t-shirts, and, as with most things in my family, things escalated quickly. And now, Lebfest is a

decades-old annual tradition whose ever-expanding guest list includes extended family,

friends, neighbors, and hundreds of cloves of garlic. More than once, we've needed to rent a tent.

Our core menu is fixed. La Hamishwe on Friday, Gishk and Shish Tauuk on Saturday, isy on Sunday,

but also expanding expanding and overseen

by the brilliant watchful eyes of my cousin's wife, an in-law who was Irish, and by this point

could cook every dish blindfolded.

There's something special about a family recipe.

The idea that you're using the same ingredients as your uncle or your Nona, when you take a bite of that garlicky skewer of shrimp or swirly cinnamon bun,

you can be dropped into another place and time,

whether that's your childhood home, your aunt's kitchen, or Lebfest.

On this episode, we'll have two stories all about how food can connect us to the past. First up is Terry

Wolfish Cole. She told this at a New York City story slam where the theme of the night was

Fathers. Here's Terry live at the Monk. A couple of weeks ago, I went out for dinner, my

husband and I with another family.

And there was a 16-year-old girl there, cousin Lauren.

And as 16-year-olds do, she asked about my tattoo.

16-year-old girls whose mothers do not have ink think that moms who do have ink are very cool.

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