Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers among our readers. Hugs to those of you like me who have lost your mothers, especially recently, and to anyone for whom this is a challenging day.
Whether we have given birth or not, many women perform some kind of nurturing role, whether to our families and friends, our students, our co-workers and to ourselves.
I salute every woman among our readers, as well as the women we feature here. This week, I’m introducing you to a woman whose business I’ve long admired.
A Middle Eastern Pastry Paradise
When friends come to the Detroit area, I always try to take them to Dearborn, Mich., which has one of the largest concentrations of Arab-American residents in the United States.
My tour always includes a stop at Shatila Bakery on West Warren Avenue. It’s a wonderland that begins with house made ice cream and fresh squeezed juices. The vast bakery cases include French pastries and custom cakes, a nod to the Shatila family’s Lebanese roots. Then, there are chocolates and nougat, and rice pudding and crepes.
The stars of Shatila are its Middle Eastern pastries, such as baklava in an assortment of nuts, mamoul, filled with dates, and savory pastries topped with feta and za’atar.
We are just entering the final days of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and reflection. During Ramadan, observant Muslims refrain from food and beverage from sunrise to sundown.
Then, they partake in generous meals — iftar, to break the fast, and suhoor, the big pre-dawn breakfast to line the tummy for the day ahead.
Shatila rolls out several pastries just for Ramadan, including atayef, a little pancake that is fried on one side, folded and stuffed with rich rosewater flavored ashta cream. Some are topped with pistachios and others with strawberries and Nutella.
The Women In Charge
This vast enterprise, which also does a bustling wholesale business, was founded by Riad Shatila in 1979. After he died in 2013, the women of the Shatila family stepped up to run the company.
They include CEO Zinat Shatila, Riad’s widow, and daughters Tanya and Nada Shatila, both company vice presidents. Their sister Batoul lends her retail management experience, and other family members play a part.
Nada Shatila told me that she always knew she would be part of her family’s business. She earned an MBA degree from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, where I have taught, and whose campus is a short drive from the bakery.
Shatilla has always been a melting pot for all manner of Detroit residents as well as visitors.
While it has had to make changes due to Covid, its sprawling dining room, which sits under illuminated faux palm trees, normally is busy from morning until midnight.
Right now, the bustle intensifies after dusk, but there is business from non-Muslims all day long. “Luckily, we have a very diverse customer base,” Nada says.
Plans for expansion
In recent times, those customers have noticed some changes in Shatila’s lineup. The store has greatly expanded its selection of ice creams, juices and Arabic coffee. You can see the beautiful custom cake designs on Shatila’s Instagram account.
And, it has been pushing more heavily into national distribution, through its own website and by signing up with Goldbelly. Nada estimates that revenue is now about evenly divided between wholesale and retail, although she declined to share numbers.
“I personally would love to get bigger,” Nada says. “We’re recognized as a brand for our quality and our longstanding tradition for excellence and quality.”
Her mother isn’t quite as focused on growth, which Nada admits causes a little tension with the younger generation. “That’s normal. In every family dynamic, there’s someone who wants to run forward and expand everything,” she says.
Still, she enjoys her involvement. “Sometimes with family businesses, you’re doing more emotional work than corporate work,” she says. “That’s what you get when you’re working with aunts and uncles. But at the end of the day, we’re still a big family.”
If you can get to Dearborn before the Eid, which will probably take place on Wednesday, you can sample atayef before they are retired for 2021. Nada estimates that the bakery serves between 2,400 and 3,600 per day.
Otherwise, stop in and enjoy any of the vast selection. You can find a recipe for Shatila’s rice pudding here (I’m making some this weekend).
The Secret History of Home Economics
Did you take a home economics class in middle school or high school? Once upon a time, this was how American students learned about cooking, sewing and housekeeping techniques.
I took home ec in my junior high school and I have two memories from it.
I learned how to put a zipper in a skirt, a skill I’ve never since deployed, and I taught our teacher the way my mother cooked sausages (start them in a frying pan in about an inch of water, then transfer them to a pre-heated oven to crisp up).
Home economics had a little told history, though, until Danielle Dreilinger took a deep dive into the topic. She is a former New Orleans Times-Picayune education reporter, who also was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, like me.
I knew going into The Secret History of Home Economics that I would learn something, but I had no idea how much.
The field began after the Civil War, via Ellen Swallow Richards, already the holder of a degree from Vasser, who became the first woman to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She began testing chemical properties as they related to household activities. As the field grew, she and other researchers explored how modern advances could make things easier and more efficient for housewives, and for working women who had to juggle housekeeping responsibilities as well as employment.
While home economics might seem connected in some minds to white American suburbia, Dreilinger explains that there was a parallel path of research going on among Black academicians.
Home economics also introduced generations of immigrants to the way American households ideally were run, providing a standard of assimilation that swept across the country as social advancement took place and wealth began to accumulate.
But as the Women’s Movement took hold in the 1970s and beyond, home economics seemed to be an idea mired in the past, a specialty meant to keep women from advancing in the workplace.
By the time my mother earned another university degree in the 1980s, it was called “Consumer Science,” and the field had broadened beyond the home itself to encompass sustainability themes.
There have been efforts in recent times to revive home ec, especially to shore up the cooking and housekeeping skills that have lagged among younger generations.
As this interesting book shows, however, those efforts may never have the widespread embrace that took place during the 20th century, because our lifestyles are now too diverse and technology focused.
The link goes to the Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, or you can find one at your favorite book store. With Mother’s Day on our minds, it might provide some insight into how and why some of them managed the homes where we grew up.
What I’ve Been Writing
I’ve been pretty busy over the past few weeks. Along with my story about Ramadan rice pudding at the The Takeout, I also wrote a piece for them about roasting fruit.
I never roasted much fruit, beyond apples, until author and chef Kathy Gunst introduced me to her recipe for roast strawberries. Now, I roast all kinds of fruit when I have the oven going, from rhubarb, which is in season now in Michigan, to peaches and apricots. Try it this spring and summer.
I also wrote on a completely different topic for the Washington Post. The University of Michigan’s outspoken Regent, Ron Weiser, continues to attack Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in his role as state GOP chairman, even though Michigan is a public university that depends on the state for funding and other activities.
Keep an eye on the Post for more of my commentaries. I should have one posting this week.
Our Next Book Giveaway — And More For Community Members
This week, I’ll be posting the next title in our book giveaway program. To enter, you simply have to be a member of the Culinary Woman Community.
You can do so by becoming a paid subscriber to the newsletter. Anyone with a paid subscription is automatically entered in our book drawings, and you also receive a heads up each week with the contents of the next newsletter.
Most importantly, you support the mission of the CulinaryWoman Newsletter, which is to share interesting and useful information about food and business. Won’t you think about becoming a paid subscriber?
Meanwhile, please follow CulinaryWoman on Twitter @culinarywoman, on TikTok @culinarywoman and on Instagram @michelinemaynard. We also have a Facebook page.
Happy Mother’s Day, stay safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask when the circumstances require it, and see you next week.