Samin Nosrat Quotes

I was possessed with a wonderful example of my Italian American family. They would come over and join us every Sunday, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them.

I grew up listening to show tunes in the back of the car.

My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

My sister and I used to act as maids and waitresses at my great aunt and uncle's cocktail parties, which were very much sort of retired, minor stars of the Yiddish theater and the Yiddish opera.

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.

Growing up, we had 30, 40, 50 people coming through the house some Thanksgivings. Sometimes there was a kids' table; other times, the plate was just sitting on your lap. You get in where you fit in at that house.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

My father is from Jamaica, and as a child I spent many holidays there. I remember the weight and drenching wetness of that hot rain, as I experienced it in my childhood, not only for itself, but for what it represented for me.

In Brazil, you are very close to your family; we saw our cousins every weekend, and my grandmother lived with us.

I had a lovely childhood. For family holidays, we went as far as the car could take us - we would drive to Florida, even though it would take three days. I didn't know we didn't have a lot of money because there was always food on the table. I didn't have a lot of stuff, but I did figure skating for a long time, and I always had my skates.

When I was growing up, Sunday lunch was my favorite time as a child. We would have a big Sunday English meal, and we would argue about things.

I spent a lot of time with extended family when I was young. Every weekend, Dad would buy half a sheep and Mum would cook for about 50 people, and we would all eat on the couch, in the kitchen, spilling out into the garden.

My hair story has been unique because my mom's a German Jew, so her hair is way different than my hair. She was always learning on my hair growing up, but I would sit there for hours, and she did learn how to braid hair. Early on, it was a lot of tears while my mom was braiding my hair.

I connect with my culture through my family. I speak Portuguese to my parents so that I can practice. I stay engaged with my extended family through a lively group chat on WhatsApp. That sense of community and family is the heart of Brazilian culture, and staying engaged with my family is what keeps me connected.

My embarrassing confession is that my father is a 'Camelot: The Musical' obsessive. So as a child, when we were going to visit relatives on the weekend, whenever we were driving back on these three-hour drives, he would be playing the musical soundtrack on repeat, on the cassette in our car, to the extent that we begged him never to play it again.

Being Latina, I'm super close with my family. I love them, and I love spending time with them. I love being at my grandma's house and eating her food.

All my summer and Puja vacations were spent in Calcutta with my didima and a host of other relatives and friends.

I lived a block and a half away from four cousins, and I had three siblings. The Jaeger home was a big, messy, happy family.

Most summers we went to Bangladesh and stayed in Grandad's village, filled with relatives. I'm one of 67 grandchildren.

As a child, we would all go to a tiny village near Burgos, and we'd have typical Spanish parties in the summer. There would be a band and grandparents dancing all night dressed up as American Indians and things like that.

Family is something that I grew up with, and the Mexican culture has a lot of, you know - Sunday is the day you spend with your family, and you have 40 to 50 people at your house, the uncles and the cousins, and I grew up with that.

When I'm home, my family makes Mexican food, and we listen to a lot of Spanish music together. We love dancing to it.

Growing up I always watched WWF with my dad on Saturdays. It was our thing!

My first experience with the arts must have been the sound of my mother singing to me when I was in the womb. The sound of my father singing to me when he held me. The sound of The Temptations records that they played.