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Page 24:

"Every family had a daredevil. In my father's family, the honor goes to Uncle Nematollah, whose daring feat consisted of selecting his own wives, three times."

In Iranian culture, arranged marriage is expected. You don't get to choose your own husband or wife, rather your parents do the choosing for you. In the American culture, an arranged marriage seems like the strangest thing in the world. So classifying someone as a "daredevil" because they chose their own wife would seem weird to many Americans, who would say someone's a "daredevil" because they went off the highest ski jump on the mountain, or went skydiving. This short introduction to Uncle Nematollah already makes me think that he's going to be an interesting character, and not the typical Iranian who follows all of the traditions and ways. I think that Uncle Nematollah will be a fun, innovative character that Firoozeh really likes.

Page 25:

"In Iran, meal preparation took up half of each day, starting early in the morning with my mother telling our servant, Zahra, which vegetables to clean and cut. The vegetables were either grown in our garden or had been purchased the day before. The ingredients in our meals were limited to what was in season. Summer meant eggplant or okra stew, fresh tomatoes, and tiny cucumbers that I would peel and salt. Winter meant celery or rhubarb stew, cilantro, parsley, fenugreek, and my favorite fruit, sweet lemon, which is a thin-skinned, aromatic citrus not found in America. There was no such thing as canned, frozen, or fast food. Everything, except for bread, which was purchased daily, was made from scratch. Eating meant having to wait for hours for all of the ingredients to blend together just right. When the meal was finally ready, we all sat together and savored the sensuous experience of a delicious Persian meal. Upscale restaurants in America, calling themselves "innovative and gourmet," prepare food the way we used to. In Iran, it was simply how everybody ate."

This stood out to me because it is completely accurate. Here in America, we have so many processed and packaged foods. Good, home-cooking is becoming less and less common while already prepared, frozen dinners are taking its place. Firoozeh and her family had to transition from exquisite Persian meals to the dinners found in American that you can usually cook in thirty minutes or less. So many Americans are resorting to fast food because of how easy it is, and less and less families are sitting down to home-cooked meals together. For Firoozeh and her family, this was probably a very hard thing to adapt to.