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| the coosa that alicia made for us last week. |
what is a coosa? well, that depends on who you're asking. for the past week in our home, coosa has been on our dinner plates, stuffed with spiced ground beef and rice and sitting in a broth of tomatoes. but simply, coosa is a lebanese word for squash. but then again, it's just not that simple.
alicia and i were married on august 6 in the clarence e. lewis arboretum at michigan state university. it was an incredible weekend, with family coming out of the woodworks to bring in the celebration with us. and family is what i'm getting at here.
for the aboods, alicia's lebanese side of the family, coosa is a word with many layers. for one, coosa is a little squash. as a kid, you could've told me a coosa grew from the planted thumbs of green giants, and i might've believed you. that's what they look like. a green giant's thumb. for another, and i speak from experience here, coosa is a timekey. when alicia and i sat down to eat the coosa she made last week, i could tell the dish had taken her to a place i'd never been—and eating it with her was the closest i might ever get. in that memory of a place, alicia's grandfather was there and so too were his siblings, the cousins, the rest of the family—the dish was full of memories for her. it was a special moment for me to take part in, especially in light of our marriage. but then there's the variations on coosa. if one abood cousin were to bring his or her coosa dish to another abood cousin's house, i'd put money down that the comparisons would start spilling out the moment the lid was pulled off the squash filled pot. the broth is too thick. you don't puree your tomatoes? and that squash... you over stuffed the squash. it shouldn't split open like that. and where's the cinnamon? i can't taste the cinnamon! what'd you do to that rice, sweetheart? it's puffed up like a wet sponge! and so on. one coosa is different from another.
but then there's cousin maureen, and her father. and she's the reason alicia cooked the coosa last week. maureen wrote a series of blog posts about coosa, capped off by the beautiful story about how her father called her and her siblings coosa the way other kids are called pumpkin. "now we always ask the delicious little children in the family: 'are you a coosa?!' and they laugh and smile, and know exactly what we mean." her blog post is titled "are you a coosa?" follow that link and read her story. it'd be a shame not to.
and that's the magic of food. at times, food simply fills a need. it can be a peach in the morning or a slice of cheese in the afternoon, just to appease that pang of hunger. but then food can be a whole lot more. in this case, food tells a story about my new family. and in a way, my writing on this one dish called coosa, is symbolic of my marrying alicia a few weeks ago.
just look at that picture at the top of this post. most people have never seen a dish like this before. so where did it come from? and why is it in my house? the story is there, and it's just beginning.
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