Our Southern & Lebanese Easter :)

My dad's side of the family is Lebanese. His great grandfather (my great great) came from Lebanon and sold notions door to door until he had enough money to send for his wife and children. When they left Lebanon, they packed few of their belongings, left everything else in their home, locked the door and never turned back. After the family arrived here, my great grandfather (my Giddee) and his twin were born. 

Our family tries very hard to keep the culture, recipes and stories alive.

I have WONDERFUL memories of huge family reunions on Pine Island.

So now at family get-togethers for holidays, we have all the usual Southern food but we also have kibbeh, raw kibbeh, grape leaves and a bunch of other things that I didn't even realize were Lebanese or influenced by Lebanese cooking bc it was our normal. One example being what we call Meaty Beans (lol) which is butterbeans cooked in a tomato sauce with ground beef with a bit of cinnamon.

Usually my godmother Gina and my cousin, Genie, make the kibbeh and grape leaves. It is literally some of my favorite foods. This past Christmas Mama, Jen and I decided to make gribbee - Lebanese version of a wedding cookie - kinda shortbread-like covered in powdered sugar. It was an awesome thing to share with each other and we got the girls (Betty & Raina) in on it too. Passing it on!

So this Easter we decided to try grape leaves. We knew they wouldn't be as good as Gina and Genie's but we had fun trying and they did turn out delicious - just a lil different. Next time we will use a bit more rice.

 Gina gets better quality grape leaves from Andy's Deli but we got ours from Publix so we had to cut out the woody stem.

 They were working so hard :) Me too.

After adding the lemon juice we let them cook!

The Easter lunch spread

 Raw kibbeh

 Baked kibbeh

 So proud of our attempt at grape leaves! We hope we made you proud Gina! 

We had a great Easter. 

And now I'm hungry after looking at those pictures :)