Layer of life street food

What’s the value of  . . .  street food? It depends on where we go, what we’re willing to experience, and how we interpret sources of life.

I closed The Cookery for a while last month and explored Syria. With my kids in tow, we found our daily bread along the streets, from the gates of Damascus to the shores of Latakia, and savored the flat food with gratitude. Though it shouldn’t take a special envoy to remind us that bread is a precious source of life, the bread basket doesn’t always make its way around the table.

This was my first visit to Syria, and my family and I came away with new experiences as well as reminders of things that we inherently know though sometimes unintentionally disregard. Bread, flat or full, is a source of life to be shared without waste. For 20 Syrian Lira (at the exchange rate of about 40 cents four weeks ago), I picked up a supply of freshly baked bread that had gone from the fiery oven to a bread bag (with plenty of handling in between) to the table. Often, the hands that sold us the bread had a hand in baking it, too. The value of this layer of life stretched far beyond 20 Lira.