In this tender and deeply grounding episode, we sit with Mai Khader Kakish; storyteller, recipe-keeper, and the heart behind Almond & Fig. 🌿

Mai shares how Almond & Fig began as a way to feel closer to home while her family remained in Palestine;  a place to preserve her teta’s recipes and document the stories, wisdom, and traditions woven into every dish. For Mai, food is not just nourishment; it is storytelling, resistance, and the inheritance of a people who survived unimaginable loss. 

This episode was recorded during some of the darkest days of the ongoing genocide before any aid was allowed in and at the height of starvation and you can feel both the weight and the warmth in our conversation. We let the episode begin exactly as it unfolded: raw, unfiltered, and honest. 

Together, we delve into:
 • Preserving ancestral recipes and the love tucked into every little “hastak” 
 • Armenian–Palestinian lineage, generational survival, and carrying forward what others tried to erase
 • Food as memory, identity, resistance, and inheritance
 • The grief of losing our grandmothers and keeping their stories alive 🤍
 • How food is being intentionally weaponized and the devastating impact of forced starvation
 • The work Mai does with the Seraj Library Project 

This conversation is about the women who raised us, the hands that fed us, and the ways we continue to carry them; through recipes, memory, and heritage preservation

📚For more about the Seraj Library Project and ways to support, visit serajlibraries.org
Follow Mai at @almondandfig for recipes, heritage, and storytelling.
Stay connected with us: @sitis.stories • sitisstories.com