Through in-depth qualitative research with Syrian women, the project endeavors to understand migrant homemaking activities and specifically how food practices change and are involved in integration.
This project was funded through The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK) 1001 programme, project number: 122K209.
Since one lacks power and strength as a refugee, you want to show off your smartness with everything you do. You do not want to let anyone talk badly about you. I mean, I have no power, but I want to be strong, so I learned how to cook.
Since I was a little girl, I learned from my mother how to roll yaprak (sarma) and cook molokhia which is my favorite dish. For us, these dishes were the dishes that were prepared on special occasions, as I told you, such as Eid or, for example, if a guest came to us.
I have an emotional relationship with molokhiya cooking” because it is a special dish in our culture. When we first came here in 2013, even molokhiya was not available at all. I remember we told Uncle Bassam to bring molokhiya from Syria. Despite the war, he came and brought us a kilo of molokhiya leaves.
I have no relatives here. But I invite my husband's family. I cook dishes such as tepsi, rice pilaf, cacik, salad and chicken. When I was in Syria, we used to barbecue a lot in our family meals. We used to make things like stuffed meatballs, börek, bulgur pilaf, etc. In family meals, everyone misses the taste of their mother's hands, I miss her, I mean, by the way, I haven't seen my mother for more than 10 years, I left her as a young person, and now she is old.
The housewife must always have alternatives, especially when she wants to be a housekeeper. I don't eat ready-made food [from restaurants]. The first thing is to save money; the second thing is that when I do something for my daughter or for my children, I make them at home. I know how to do it
