My childhood experiences in growing up Armenian were both a blessing
and a wonderful learning experience.  I was one of those first 
generation siblings, born in America after the 1915 genocide.  We  
were four brothers and three sisters, and most of us couldn't speak 
a word of English when we first started grammar school.

Both of our beloved parents have since passed away, but while they 
were with us, there wasn't one occasion when even the most casual 
visit from any of our friends or relatives didn't turn out to be 
a festive event.  And while growing up, as most of those from my 
generation will readily acknowledge, we took such festive occasions 
for granted.  Fact is, that such gestures were so commonplace among
all Armenian families, that no one gave it a second thought.  In our
family, and I'm sure it was the same in all Armenian families, during 
that period, there were always some special delicacies which Mom 
would carefully hide from her children for such unforeseen or 
unannounced festive occasions.  But, no matter how well Mom hid those
delicacies, we always managed to find them.

The years have rolled by and time has harvested many of those dear 
loving souls that were once a part of our happy existence.  And 
looking back, I have also come to realize that those old time 
festive events that we so casually took for granted in our younger 
years, have become one of the most cherished parts of our 
rememberences because it was and still remains the hallmark of 
our immortal Armenian hospitality.

My mother, as with most of the old generation Armenian mothers, never 
kept written recipes for her traditional Armenian dishes.  The basic 
ingredients were part of her memory from childhood.  She would 
approximate all of the ingredients by eye (utch-gee-chup-ov) and 
adjust it by taste along the way.  And it was this little adjusting 
by taste that separated one woman's cooking from another's.  So 
much so that during all major Armenian get-togethers, it became 
quite easy for our hereditary Armenian taste buds to determine who 
cooked the Sarma or who cooked the Yalanji.  In short, the 
individual personality of each and every Armenian woman was 
indelibly imprinted in her taste buds and thereafter reflected in 
her cooking.