By Dana Khraiche and Nadine Ghaith

So how about that? Lebanon has broken the Guinness World Record for the largest servings of Hummus and Tabouleh last weekend. Yes, all that in one weekend.

The reason of all reasons was not only competition and wanting to be in the Guinness Book, we are already in it with the longest veil and the largest book. It was despite others who claim the Hummus and Tabouleh to be theirs; countries such as Israel have claimed that Hummus is originally invented by them! Oh, the horror!!

But Lebanon insisted on reaffirming the Lebanese origins of the Hummus and its faithful companion the Tabouleh.  The Lebanese community and of course the Red Cross who pretty much did not get a minute to breathe with all the chopping that wounded many fingers and nails. So we lost “things” reclaiming our right, that’s what every nation has to go through.

Michel Azzi hosted the event, a mountain of patriotism that man.  I think they brought him in to fill up space; he seemed to ramble on just to hear his own voice, urging the crowd into a reluctant chant, stalling if you want until the cooking began. Being a curious bunch of civilians, the crowd kept coming up on stage and trying to look into the giant pot of hummus despite there being a screen that, very conveniently, displayed what was going on inside. Security had to keep getting people off the stage and working themselves into a sweaty fit, but I bet they ate Hummus and felt proud to be Lebanese.

The question is: is it now officially Lebanese? Frankly, we don’t care. The important thing is that the world witnessed our effort into identifying what’s ours and we did it in a civilized way proving that we, the Lebanese, can pretty much outdo many people.  But, yes Hummus and Tabouleh are generally Middle Eastern.

All in all, it was an impressive stunt, and whether this gets us closer to convincing the world that these foods are really Lebanese or not, at least it’s the kind of thing that makes this city such a fun place to live in.