Olives and makdoos: making seasonal mouneh ("provision")

20th December 2024

Tamara Taher

With the beginning of each season, people in the Mashrek (the Levant: Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) ary busy preparing "mouneh", especially in the winter time. "Mouneh" basically meaning "storing", is the practicing of preserving food (seasonal vegetables, animal products and herbs) through various methods. Jams and marmalades, vegetable pickles, dairy products, molasses and syrups are some of the food products that people have traditionally learned and practiced storing and preserving in the region. 

The end of autumn and the beginning of winter, after the olive harvest and at the end of aubergine season, is time for preserving olives and "makdoos" for the rest of the year. Each family and community usually has specific variations of recipes of what to put with olives ("zaitun") and how to stuff tiny eggplants before setting them in olive oil-full jars of different sizes. 

With the expansion of mass production and consumption, electrical house equipments such as refrigerators, and the availability of mouneh products in supermarkets, the practice of preparing one's own mouneh has become less frequent and shared. 

However, in the past decade, a growing renewed interest in the reappropriation of this practice has characterized the Jordanian food market: from shops to NGOs to markets and restaurants. While such reappropriation can be used in terms of marketing strategy and identity-setting of a brand or shop, experiences like Taghmees and Farfaheeneh in Amman have been trying to underscore the value of the social relations and networks, as well as the knowledges, embedded in "mouneh" and its relationship with seasonality. 

Preparing mouneh is a social and cultural practice: it brings people together as they prepare big quantities of food through long prepation processes, which entail a lot of time spent together telling stories and sharing thoughts and experiences. On the other hand, this practice also reconnects people materially with the times of food, the earth and the climate, disrupting the never-ending "abundance" of capitalist food markets that ensure that all foods are available all year long.

The photos here above were taken as I helped Taghmees organizers prepare jars of olives and makdoos, which they sell in the collaborative local market they hold every two weeks at Fann wa Chai. The income generated by this activity is intended by Taghmees to support its activities and continuity, away from foreign funding mechanisms.