Food has always played a significant part in get togethers for my family, especially for my mother’s relatives. Her parents were Lebanese, and stuffed squash, tabooley, kibbee and chicken and rice were Sunday dinner staples.

My mother kept up the tradition, and all of us drop everything for a chance to have dinner at Mom’s house, those ethnic dishes an integral part of every mealtime.

When my mom visited us this summer, she spent a Sunday afternoon showing my sons how to cook some of those family-honored meals.

When my nieces heard about our afternoon, they good-naturedly demanded a “Cooking with Delores” session as well.

My mom obliged and most of the female members of my family gathered at my mom’s for an afternoon of chopping, slicing, simmering and learning.

My mom said in the old days, her mother would rise early to boil a chicken and pick the peppers and mint from her garden. We took a modern short cut and picked up an already roasted chicken and raided the produce section at the local Winn Dixie.

We all helped take the chicken off the bone and hollow out the peppers and squash. My mom showed us how to mix rice, tomato paste and seasonings together to stuff the bell peppers and yellow squash.

As we worked, the aunts entertained the nieces with stories about our childhood, each story growing more grand with subsequent tellings, the laughter practically nonstop.

In the background, my mom was carefully arranging the peppers and squash in a pot, and I remembered watching my grandmother perform the same ritual. Her kitchen smelled heavenly as she cooked, and now my mom’s kitchen was smelling the same way.

My youngest sister took notes as my mom explained how to make the dishes but, she tried to sneak a few moves past us, claiming it was faster to leave out the little details and share the big picture with us.

We good-naturedly accused her of trying to keep all the recipes to herself, and then we remembered our grandmother was the same way with her recipes. Truth be told, I haven’t shared any of my favorite recipes with my sons, so I guess that tradition lives on.

As more family members arrived, nieces, aunts, sisters-in-law and sisters chopped, told jokes, reminisced about the old days and eagerly shared news about what was happening in their lives.

Boyfriends and husbands talked about LSU football, fishing and the best way to fry a turkey, Louisiana style. And, of course, there was lots of kidding and laughter, as is the way when my family gathers.

One of the last dishes we made was the kibbee, and I finally found out how my mom created the mystery middle layer of that baked meat dish – she sautéed seasoned meat, onions and pine nuts together and placed that scrumptious mixture between the two layers of raw meat.

The baked layer – the one that had been seasoned and taken to the end stage – held the entire casserole together. It seemed fitting we ended our cooking lesson with the kibbee because that’s how we were that afternoon.

We all tasted the dishes and declared them the best we’d ever had.

That afternoon, laughter, good-natured kidding and many-times-told family stories, shared between four generations, bonded us together, just as sharing foods from our childhood connected us with our roots and our heritage.

When all the food was on the table, we stood back and took photos of our handiwork. You’d have thought we were documenting a gourmet meal in a four-star restaurant. For us, it was a banquet, but not of fancy canapés or grand soufflés.

Ours was a family banquet held together and served up with love and laughter.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.