Transcriber: sepsa Alhaj Yousef Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Where do you come from? Where's home?
Such simple questions, yet tough to answer for so many of us.
I typically respond, “I grew up southwest of Toronto, own a house in Ottawa,
and live in “insert current location,” that current location being Prague,
from where I’m speaking to you today.
My wife Ayesha typically gets a follow-up question of “Where are you really from?”
code for curiosity about her ethnic background.
She’s from Toronto, but her parents were born in India.
Where’s home?
It’s a challenging question to answer for a family like ours.
In August 2000, as a young couple and recent graduates,
Ayesha with her master’s in international development
and me, fresh from chef school,
we moved to Hong Kong for her first overseas posting as a Canadian diplomat.
It’s been 20 years of relocating
between Canada, parts of Asia, and now Europe,
which for our children has meant a life on the move.
Our 17-year-old daughter, Lyla,
has moved six times to six countries and attended nine schools.
Her 12-year-old brother, Kiran, is only a couple of moves behind.
They were both born in Canada
but they’ve lived most of their lives outside of it.
They and most of their friends are known as “third-culture kids.”
Also called the “global nomad,” a third-culture kid
is someone who has spent a significant part of their childhood
living in one or more cultures other than their own,
typically because of a parent’s career.
Now it’s a life full of advantages and privileges,
but it’s one where each child has to integrate elements of one culture
or another culture with their own culture to create a third culture.
It’s not always easy, so if you were to ask us,
if you ask each member of our family, “Where are you from?”
you’ll get four different answers, but if you were to ask us, where’s home,
we'd all say the kitchen and the dinner table.
Our many moves have taught us that home is not a geographical location.
It’s an emotional one. It’s where you feel most comfortable.
It's where you feel you belong.
So for us,
food is an integral ingredient woven into the tapestry of our kids’ lives.
It reflects their identities.
And so for us, we're most comfortable with our global menu.
It's the one constant in our lives,
so now our family’s global menu
doesn’t necessarily resemble the one that I grew up with.
Now Ayesha and I had different upbringings from our kids and from each other,
but our family’s menu, at least mine, wasn’t as varied as our current one.
So I grew up in a nuclear, WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family
in southern Ontario.
My neighborhood was visibly homogenous, as was the food that was put on the table.
On weeknights,
between shuttling me from hockey practice and my sister to dance class,
my mom would prepare simple, quick, and tasty meals.
It might be something like a stew of minced beef,
canned peas, canned potatoes,
or something like pan-fried pork chops, stovetop scallop potatoes, and applesauce.
And on weekends, we’d visit the local Mennonite Farmers Market,
and we’d pick up some freshly-made squeaky cheese,
maybe some Octoberfest sausages, and always a seasonal fruit pie.
Now, the only way that an international flavor made its way to our table
was maybe as the form of a Greek salad or as a sauce poured from a bottle
of a then-popular line of products called “Memories Of.”
So if you wanted a flavor of China, you’d get “Memories Of Szechwan.”
If you wanted flavors of Japan, you’d get “Memories Of Kyoto.”
Now, my wife, Ayesha - she was born and raised in Toronto,
Canada's most multicultural and largest city.
Her parents emigrated from India,
and they had considerable shock when they arrived in Canada,
especially when compared to their upper-class lifestyle in India.
When they arrived, they didn’t even know how to boil water for tea,
but they persevered.
They taught themselves how to cook even a handful of Indian dishes,
and they found familiar ingredients and North Indian flavors
at the many grocery stores and restaurants along Toronto’s Little India.
Now, their weekly family dinner
was maybe something like Hungarian cabbage rolls or falafels,
and when they wanted something spicy but wasn’t Indian,
they’d pick up some Szechwan food, or maybe some Thai curries,
and on Sundays, they’d gather around dim sum with friends
at one of the many restaurants that dotted Spadina Avenue,
then the center of Toronto’s Chinatown.
Now each summer, they would go back to India to visit family,
and they'd always have a suitcase full with cans of tomato soup,
packets of macaroni and cheese,
and other snacks to feed a young, picky eater
who found her father’s Indian food too spicy.
Now, this portable pantry would be supplemented
by milder Indian dishes like dal and rice or aloo paratha.
Now thankfully, Ayesha is no longer a picky eater,
but she and her parents still travel with some of their favorite foods.
So we moved to India, and her parents would come to visit us from Canada, India,
and she and her parents would bring their favorite tea.
That’s right, they would bring tea that was picked, grown, and shipped
from India back to India,
and that same popular product was sold in the marketplace there.
But you see, the flavor profile was different.
It didn’t taste like home.
Every three or four years,
my wife and I uproot our kids’ lives because of her career.
They have to start a new school. They have to make new friends.
And so we want to give them a solid foundation
on how they can create their new life.
Now, as a chef with 20 years experience, and as a traveler with equally as much,
I find that food is the easiest way to do that.
So in the first few weeks of setting up a new house
when we’re trying to figure out: how to get internet access?
where to buy your groceries? how do I sign up my kids for sports?
we like to engage with the new culture.
So we take our kids to new restaurants
and introduce them to new flavors and dishes.
So this is how, as a toddler,
Lyla learned to love masala dosa and eat appam -
to her two-year-old self, crispy crepes and savory pancakes.
Now, our first meal in Hanoi,
and the first time three-year-old Kiran used chopsticks was over a bowl of pho
and Vietnamese spring rolls.
Now these and many other dishes
regularly make their way onto our family’s dinner table,
and during these times,
if we’re having a rough transition or the kids are having a challenging time,
even many years later, I look to other comfort foods,
so it could be something like pasta with tomato sauce
or a simple dal and rice, or banh xeo,
or maybe even their favorite warm coconut banana tapioca pudding.
Now, during COVID, when they couldn’t see their grandparents,
they would ask me to prepare their Papa’s famous butter chicken or his aloo pooris.
So why am I sharing with you our global menu?
Well, for us, not only are they delicious,
but these dishes are dependable and trustworthy.
They don’t judge us, just like a family member or a friend.
So when we're sad and nostalgic, we turn to them for comfort.
When we are proud of an accomplishment or we want to celebrate,
we turn to them because they bring us joy and they help create tasty memories.
Most of you are going to move at some point in your life,
whether it’s for a new school, a new job, or for a new adventure
So what I want you to do tonight.
When you go home, I want you to take a look in your fridge.
Take a look in your pantry.
Think back to family gatherings and special moments,
and think about what food was there because I want you to think
about what would you pack in your culinary suitcase?
Because no matter how long you’re there
or for whatever length of time or geographic location,
you could always pull out a couple ingredients to make your favorite dish,
and in one bite, you’ll know you’re home.
(Applause)