Today was perfect for making dolma. It was slightly sunny, but more dreary and windy. Time moves strange at the end of the year, partly due to things winding down and the fact that it’s completely dark by 5 p.m. There’s no equilibrium, no balance, or center.

Sometimes you need the right dish to make you feel whole (and full) again. So when I caught my mom cooking up a storm in the kitchen, I grabbed my camera.

This is the “kharn” or “mixed” version of dolma, which is traditionally made in grape leaves. The art of dolma making should be taken seriously – it’s not for any novice. It takes just the right kind of weathered, but strong hands to roll those grape leaves into perfection, preferably between gossip breaks with other women and copious amounts of “soorj” or Armenian coffee.  For this version you scoop out vegetables, like squash, eggplant, tomatoes and onions and fill them with a herb, spice, vegetable and rice mixture, leaving them to cook for a very, very long time.

This version also has ground meat, but because I don’t eat meat (cue Aunt Toula from My Big Fat Greek Wedding), these are the perfect vegetarian pick-me-up.

Of course, dolma isn’t unique to just Armenian culture. The Greeks, Turks, Azeris, and other groups of Middle Eastern origin include it as a staple in their cuisine. Even with its varied background scattered in the region, it always have the same impact, the comforting feeling that everything is going to be ok, at least until you finish your dish.

I like to eat dolma with barbari, an Iranian bread, a fluffy flat bread that will leave you speechless. Trust. I’m not dealing too well with the 5 p.m. getting dark thing, as well as the fact that my birthday is in 2 weeks, so the dolma did wonders. Of course, now the danger is I’m going to have to keep eating it to sustain euphoria.

Somehow, every Sunday night I tend to gravitate towards browsing (while weeping) Anthropologie’s online store. It comes somewhere before I head to bed and after I’ve had my last cup of tea. Last week, at the same time,  I was hell bent on ordering the most beautiful quilt cover I had ever seen. I put it in my shopping bag, but fell asleep before I pressed order. The next morning it was sold out. I almost cried. It wasn’t all tears though – the cover reappeared a few days later and I snagged the last one.

Last night, I was doing some usual browsing and whining about how I why why why can’t I just live in the Anthro store and have $5,676,231 so I can buy their entire collection of everything when I spotted these “Kremlin” cookie jars and let out a small gasp.

It’s very odd seeing culturally significant details, like food, that you grew up with, being marketed en masse to the world. Piroshki? There wasn’t a week when these fried potato-filled fried doughy treats weren’t in my house. Halvah? We lived off the stuff, as did any other family from the entire greater Middle East region. Halvah is even used in Armenian culture as a ceremonious offering at funerals.

The jars are made in Italy and are being sold at $198 a pop. “The names of exotic treats from around the world are inscribed on uniquely Russian ceramic structures,” the description says, “but feel free to stuff them full of classic oatmeal-raisins.”

I like how they look, because let’s face it, nothing from Anthropologie can ever look bad, but I still feel…odd. Would the person who buys these (and also the person who CAN afford to buy these) really understand the meaning behind these “exotic treats?” That they’re not really exotic for an entire population of people in the East and how much more lies behind their names emblazoned on a ceramic jar sold at a retailer that is selling not just clothes, but a lifestyle?

This is what I mean when I say that food is always so much more than just food. It is joy and pain and familiarity. It is family gatherings, recipes passed down by immigrant families whose cultural heritage means so much to them, comfort at funerals and hot pita sandwiches eaten on cool summer nights next to the grill with the smell of coal in the air.

Maybe I’m thinking too much and going too deep. And who am I kidding, if these were $19 as opposed to $198, I would have probably bought one or two. But, it still feels a little odd.

What do you get when you cross an American fall classic with delicacies from the Middle East? Pumpkin pie with Medjool dates, raisins and walnuts, of course. I was trying to experiment with one of my favorite seasonal treats and came up with this, thanks to my sister who suggested the dates. The crust and pumpkin puree were both made from scratch. It took me hours, but the payoff made it worth it. Read more here:

The Khohanotz: Pumpkin Pie, Middle East Style

There is something so soothing and calming, and yet so manic and nerve wrecking about baking. You can follow a recipe, with the right measurements, a hint of this, a teaspoon of that, but somewhere between the flour and sugar, things can go wrong. Kind of like life. But then, when you achieve greatness and the oven delivers you your magnificent golden brown cake with everything in place, you feel a great sense of accomplishment. Also kind of like life.

To bake, to create something with your two hands from scratch, it’s meaningful. And then to feed it someone who actually likes it is equally as satisfying.

With the Los Angeles sun setting on Friday afternoon, I decided to make meringue cookies.

I like the science of combining sugar and egg whites and watching them transform from a lumpy, clear mass to a bowl of glistening meringue base. But more than that, I like adding flavors and additions to simple recipes that carry memories, experiences and culture.

I was born in Tehran, Iran to Armenian parents. My parents fled to Greece after the 1978 Iranian Revolution and landed in Los Angeles, where I was raised. Their parents come from Tabriz and Moscow and Baku. This summer I found out that a part of my family going back a few generations might have been from the Nagorno-Karabagh region, which remains a phantom state, as the New York Times recently called it. My background is a culturally colorful map that has bred in me  a strong appreciation for diversity and curiosity, and yet, as is usual with immigrant families, a multidimensional identity that isn’t always the easiest thing to deal with when you’re an awkward teenager and young adult trying to navigate your way through the deep black hole known as life.

As I get older, it gets easier and the appreciation grows as the years go by, especially for food. As anyone with a similar Middle Eastern or Caucasus influenced background can tell you, food is truly the cultural essence of life in every sense of the word – in celebration, in pain, in moments of solitude and with more extended family members that rivals the Duggar Clan. It is used as the setting for laughter, arguments and everything in between. A table bubbling over with smells and concoctions holding the pain and joy of a tribe, is the hearth of the Armenian or Middle Eastern household.

Rose water, pistachios, saffron – they evoke memories for me, tied to occasions and people that have always appeared in the narrative of my life.

I used crushed pistachio, always ready to in a mug in our fridge, just in case my mom feels like making the mouthwatering Middle Eastern dessert known as Kadayif, rose water – an ingredient you will see all over the map in recipes from Cyprus to India, and saffron, an expensive but powerful spice cultivated in Iran. This particular one had been brought back from Iran with a relative a few days earlier, so I get an A for authenticity.

These flavors have incredible chemistry together. They compliment each other, without one overpowering the other. Opening an oven door and smelling rose water baking with hints of pistachio and saffron is comforting.

I have been thinking of what to do with this space of mine for a long time. I ignore it for months, out of frustration and when I do post, there’s no uniformity or continuity, no conversation.

I want to change that. For the last two years, a lot of the work I’ve been doing in my professional life as a journalist has revolved around communities and issues facing Armenia, the South Caucasus, greater Middle East and its diasporas. These parts of the world fascinate me. Maybe it’s because my roots are spread out in and around it. Maybe it’s a selfish, silly need to discover or enhance a part of my identity, or maybe it’s because despite my cultural connections, they are some of the most fascinating places facing the most fascinating issues in the world. I want to make this space a conversation about those issues, about the lives of immigrants in foreign countries and the ones in the developing countries I mentioned, about culture, civil issues, politics and human rights abuses, even Los Angeles, but triumphs as well, about what I have a passion for, which is writing about how extraordinary issues impact ordinary people.   The twist however, is to do it mostly around a virtual dinner table – a place that has been the cornerstone of conversation for most of my life, where ideas were exchanged between copious amounts of saffron-infused rice and arguments cooled over hot cups of chai made from the amazingness of the samovar. It’s a tall task, and there’s more thinking to do about how to approach serious subjects while talking about milk and baking soda and what to call it and if it should even be here.

I’m not sure what will unfold, but I’d like to think of it as my little experiment, a way to progress conversation and perhaps progress myself in the process.  Grab a cup of tea and check back soon.

After several published stories, nights out with some of the most amazing people I’ve met in my life, copious amounts of homemade mulberry vodka, a neo-pagan festival near a 4500-year-old archeological site,  traveling miles upon miles of sometimes stomach turning roads on a fold out chair while a toddler threw up on me, rescuing three street dogs, a heartwarming, fabulous wedding, a month long reality show marathon and recuperating from travel, I’ve made my way back to Los Angeles from Armenia and London.

I came back last Friday to traffic, never ending sunshine (it’s a curse, not a blessing), jetlag, a little dog and my family who had missed me quite a lot. On Saturday, I was the keynote speaker at a journalism event organized by my alma mater. On Sunday, I fell asleep at 6 p.m. Throughout the week, I tried to nurse myself back to life with tea and  music. On Friday I had a nice workout playing Just Dance on Wii that I didn’t feel in every muscle in my body until the next day. On Saturday, I learned how to knit a hat. Fast forward to today where my head has  finally joined me in L.A. after being away for almost six months.

In between pitching editors and making lists of story ideas, it started to rain. London immediately came to mind. The city gets a bad wrap for weather, but really, it’s beautiful. It rains for half an hour, stops, and when you look out the window the sun breaks through and hits the red rooftops surrounded by the greenest trees and plants you’ve ever seen. Nostalgia flooded the room, so I decided to try my hand at replicating a soup I frequently had while there.

Made with red lentils and a sprinkling of pepper, I’m not entirely clear about its origins, but it is most probably Turkish or Cypriot. I mixed red and yellow lentils in vegetable stock with chopped onions, paprika, salt, pepper and garlic.

The spices bubbled and lingered through the kitchen. I cut and toasted a baguette. I tried to process what it felt like to be back to all my things, my clothes, car, my life that stood still while I was away. It’s nice to be here, but do you know how much I miss standing on the balcony on Pushkin street in Yerevan, watching thunderstorms cool the city after an entire day of heat, or eating honey straight from the comb in the backyard of a family from Nagorno-Kharabagh who happened to pick me up and invite me in their home just because, or browsing a flea market in Tbilisi for two whole days because I couldn’t get enough the history and memories sprawled out on the streets for sale? I miss being able to walk, and not drive. I miss milk in my tea and football games on the weekend and Soho roaring with laughter, conversations and music on a Friday night.

I made some soup to savor the memories, once again.

Greetings, world. I’ve been in Armenia for slightly over a month, although it feels much longer than that. Every day is an adventure, good or bad. Every day the heat gets more unbearable than the day before, but the nights are burning here, too, with love and laughter until the morning hours. Time moves strangely here and so does life. Trying to remember every experience and express it with words is becoming increasingly difficult, although I am making updates on my Tumblr when I can. A roundup of stories I’ve been working on, until next time:

• Improving Traffic Safety in Armenia

• Armenia: Animal Activists Demand End to Stray Dog Killings

• Intersections: A Place Best Understood Up Close

• Intersections: The Challenge of Returning Home

• Yerevan Activists Promote Humane Solution to Stray Dog Crisis

• Intersections: Rings of a Heritage’s Tree Trunk

• The Big Picture: Armenia’s Vernissage in Mobile

• The Yerevan Street Shoe Project

• LGBTs still facing discrimination in Armenia

• Armenia: Debating Sexual Abuse Against Women

• Choose Life: Activism Against Suicide

The higher the heels, the closer to God/ © Liana Aghajanian, Yerevan, Armenia

One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed since I’ve been in Yerevan is how amazingly much of the country’s women walk the streets with 4 to 5-inch heels without wincing. In their finest clothes and jewels, they put on their towering shoes and parade effortlessly on the (sometimes unstable) cobblestone streets of this small city. And don’t think they’re going to a party or a bar opening.

They walk like this to work, to school, to the supermarket, to do the most mundane of tasks, decked out in shoes that make me wobble just thinking about them.

As a result, I’ve decided to undertake a voyeuristic photography mission to document them. I’m calling it “The Yerevan Street Shoe Project” and hope to update my Flickr page with the highest and funkiest of heels I can find in Yerevan.

See all the photos so far here.

Joshua Kaufman set up "This Guy Has My Macbook" and posted photos he received from a tracking software called Hidden from his computer that was stolen

When Joshua Kaufman‘s Macbook got stolen in March, he did what any sensible person would do: go to the police. But that obviously didn’t work out, because two months later he still hadn’t seen any progress in getting his computer back. So he did what any person who wants to inspire change in this day and age would do: turn to the internet for help.

Last Friday, he set up a Tumblr called “This Guy Has My Macbook.” Thanks to the genius of the Hidden, a theft tracking software that costs $15 a year for a personal account, Kaufman had evidence of who allegedly had his computer – which was stolen straight from his apartment by the way. Despite this, and the fact that the software allowed him to pinpoint exactly where his laptop was, he wasn’t able to get police to pursue the case until they received a call from Good Morning America about the incident, after his attempt to garner some media attention went completely viral. After Kaufman posted the link to the blog on Twitter, thousands retweeted, replied, “liked” and commented on his plight, and as we’ve seen before, social media and the internet came to the rescue.

Such a cool story.

The internet can be terrible sometimes, like when I got a comment today on this very blog insinuating in so many words that I was for some reason ‘pretending’ to be a journalist because a weekly’s website had published a photo I tweeted (really, guy? please check yo self, before you wreck yo self, okay?) but it’s also a source of so much awesome.

Every time some media critic, columnist or purist makes some kind of daft (I’m only using this word because I’m in London at the moment) argument about how Twitter and Facebook can’t change the real world, I really want to shake them. No, social media can’t change the entire world, it will not manage to shift progress in many issues, but given the evidence so far, including something so small as a stolen Macbook, it’s safe to say that social media’s impact on the “real world” is pretty strong. Viva la media.

Here’s Kaufman below getting his beloved laptop back from Oakland Police:

"I Got My Macbook Back." /Flickr, by JoshuaKaufman

© Newsha Takavolian

Just learned about the work of Iranian photographer Newsha Takavolian. Her work has been published in the likes of Time and Newsweek, and her images of women are striking. She has a new exhibition called “Listen,”were she photographed female singers who are not allowed to sing, perform or record CD’s because of Islamic law in Iran. These two images are from this series, which was recently shown in Los Angeles at the Morono Kiang Gallery. Disappointed that I missed it.

Reminds me of No One Knows About Persian Cats,  a 2009 film which follows a band in Iran, and the underground rock world that musicians and youth are forced to create in the confines of strict laws.

© Newsha Takavolian

When I look through old i.d. photos of my mother, aunts and grandmothers collecting dust in shoe boxes from a time in Iran where hiding in the basement after hearing air raid sirens was normal life for a while, I am fascinated with their black, plain roosaris, the Farsi word for hijab.

Though Los Angeles has a sizable enough Iranian and Pan-Muslim population, you won’t find people wearing the hijab as easily as you will in London, either a condition of leaving behind the symptoms of oppressive regimes, the California heat or other personal reasons. Or maybe I’m not looking hard enough, since the layout of  my pedestrian-challenged hometown, with its freeways and wideness doesn’t allow for too much interaction with as many people as I’d like.

Whatever reason these particular women have for wearing a hijab and despite opinion and legislation against this expression, it is interesting to see not only the inter-mingling of the world’s cultures on the streets of this city but how the women who choose to wear the hijab, and make it fashionable – a far cry from the hijab wearing of my mother’s day.

Here are a few iPhone portraits I managed to take, mostly walking on Oxford street.

A few links:

Hijab Style, the UK’s first style guide for Muslim women.

We Love Hijab, advice on how to wear a hijab, haute hijabi couture and more.

What It’s Like Without the Muslim Headscarf, a personal blog post by Egyptian science journalist Nadia El-Awady, who also reported on the recent Egyptian Revolution.

Why I Do – Or Don’t Wear the Hijab, an interesting video report from Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty with interviews from women from a variety of countries:

All photos © writepudding.com