By Ben Kreimer

When 20-year-old Layla Elias needs mutton she doesn’t go and buy a cut from a grocery store. She buys a whole sheep and butchers it herself.

Elias loves to cook for her family, her friends and her English Language Learner teachers from Lincoln High School.

“It’s amazing to me how much food they cook,” said Elizabeth Okereke, an ELL teacher from Lincoln High who has gone to eat with Elias and her family numerous times.

Elias immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee in 2011 with her parents and four siblings. The family is Kurdish, and they left their home near Mosul, Iraq, because of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Elias’ father, Seno Elias Murad (the children use their father’s middle name as their last name), had been a farmer in Iraq. Murad’s brother had worked with the U.S. Army and came to live in the United States before Murad and his family. After arriving in America, Murad’s brother encouraged Seno and his family to immigrate, too.

As refugees, the family first went to Turkey, where they lived for about eight months. Upon arrival in the U.S., the family settled in South Dakota. They soon moved to Lincoln, Neb., because of the large Kurdish population.

In Lincoln, because of its growing Middle Eastern population, it’s become increasingly easy for refugees of the region to find food ingredients from home.

Sawsan Elias, Layla Elias’ 19-year-old sister, said that they don’t have any trouble finding the ingredients they were used to buying in Iraq: Numerous Middle Eastern grocery stores in Lincoln stock ingredients and foods sought after by local cooks like Elias.

Her preferred grocery store is Sun Grocery at 2412 N St. She also shops at Al Nahrian, located at 2230 R St.

“To cook like at home gives themselves identity,” said Sabine Zemplini, an instructor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences. “That’s a huge part of their life.

“Food is a major part of culture, especially if you are talking about refugees,” Zemplini said. “Bringing their food and their food habits to the U.S., that’s a piece of home.”

Zemplini, who teaches a class on the cultural aspects of food and nutrition, is herself an immigrant to America. She came to the U.S. from Germany.

Having been in the U.S. now for 18 years, Zemplini said that she and her family still regularly cook German foods on weeknights and on holidays.

“We are somewhat acculturated,” she said, “but not completely.”

One German item that Zemplini struggles to find in America is heavy sourdough rye bread. Coming to Nebraska, a state where as many as 40 percent of the population claims some German descent, Zemplini was hopeful that she would be able to find German style bread. This was not the case.

“We [Nebraskans] have assimilated,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of good bread here.”

Zemplini said that compared to German bread, most American breads sold in stores are relatively fluffy and sweet. As a result, she bakes all of her family’s bread.

Food acculturation is a process that occurs over generations. Zemplini said that for immigrants and refugees, the first generation to move into a new culture will “cling tightly” to their traditional foods and food habits. Such habits include the types of food eaten regularly and the foods designated for certain meal times.

For example, eggs and cereal are typical breakfast foods in American culture. But as Okereke, the ELL teacher, pointed out, foods and meal times are interchangeable in many other cultures. Many of her students don’t eat cereal or other culturally American breakfast foods. When Okereke has her students write what they had for breakfast, it’s not uncommon for a student to write that they had rice, meat and vegetables for breakfast.

Just as Zemplini bakes German-style bread, first-generation immigrants often get creative in their efforts to retain their food culture. Grocery shopping in ethnic grocery stores, like the Middle Eastern stores, or online are ways that hard-to-find ingredients can be located. But sometimes certain ingredients cannot be found and substitutions must be made.

Ethiopian refugees in Lincoln, for example, have had to get creative in obtaining teff, the world’s smallest grain and the main ingredient of the flatbread that is a staple of their traditional diet, Zemplini said. In America, teff is expensive to buy, if it’s available at all. Zemplini said the African grocery store she visited in Lincoln did not have the grain for sale, but they sold a substitute consisting of a mixture of other grains similar to teff.

Second-generation immigrants tend to integrate more fully into the mainstream culture, and their original culture begins to take on a complementary role, Zemplini said. She thinks that when her children are grown they may occasionally bake German-style bread, but she expects her grandchildren to completely do away with the traditional style of bread.

Sawsan Elias said that she and her family often eat naan – a Kurdish flatbread – for breakfast and other meals. When the family entertains visitors, Elias often makes kubbeh, a traditional Kurdish dish consisting of dough stuffed with a mixture of meat and spices. The stuffed dough is cooked in boiling water and then added to a tomato-based soup.

Okereke said that Elias is quiet both at school and at home, at least when she is invited over for meals. But Okereke added that despite her quietness, Elias is in charge of the meals at home.

“That’s her thing,” she said.  “She doesn’t want to get married, she wants to take care of her parents for the rest of her life and her plan is just to cook and stay home.”