The Zelnik in the Lunchbox
Growing up diaspora is strange: as a child, you notice all the ways your family is different; as an adult, those are often the things you hold onto the tightest. For Sophie Steger, a Macedonian-Canadian born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, that journey began in a loud Macedonian home filled with grandparents, food, traditions and a culture that followed her far beyond the front door.
There is a particular kind of childhood embarrassment reserved for children of immigrants, and it usually arrives at lunchtime. Around you, other kids begin pulling out the foods that television commercials have assured everyone are normal: crackers arranged neatly beside slices of processed cheese, juice boxes, individually wrapped snacks and, if the universe has truly smiled upon them, a Lunchable.
Then there is you, unwrapping the tin foil.
Inside: zelnik.
“Sometimes I would be a bit embarrassed when my mom would pack me Macedonian food for lunch,” Sophie remembers. “I would be opening up a tin foil wrapped zelnik and my friends would be having Lunchables, which were much cooler at the time.”
At eight years old, there is no explaining to your classmates that one day they will pay $14 for something “artisan” wrapped in brown paper while you will spend your adult life trying to recreate the exact taste of something your mother casually packed into aluminum foil on a Tuesday.
Childhood has a funny way of making us want what everyone else has. Diaspora life has an even funnier way of making us spend adulthood longing for what we once tried to hide.
Somewhere Between Mississauga and Bitola
Sophie was born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, but inside her childhood home, Canada could occasionally feel very far away. Both sides of her family come from the Bitola region of Macedonia—her father’s family from the village of Grešnica and her mother’s from Budimirci.
Her grandparents lived in the same house as Sophie and her parents, so Macedonian wasn’t a language reserved for holidays or occasional phone calls to relatives overseas. It was the language of home. In fact, Sophie learned Macedonian before she learned English.
The house itself operated according to a volume and pace familiar to many Balkan children raised abroad. It was, in Sophie’s words, “very LOUD.” There was a garden “the size of a hockey rink”—a reference only a Canadian would make—peppers hanging in the basement to dry and others being pickled for winter. Saturday mornings meant watching the Macedonian program together, followed by soap operas with her grandparents.
And, of course, there was always food.
“There was always food on the table and usually someone stopping by for coffee,” Sophie remembers.
Family wasn’t something scheduled into life; family was life. Meals were shared, weekends involved relatives, and plans became family discussions. School, friendships and seemingly minor decisions could suddenly require the participation of an informal Balkan parliamentary committee.
Sophie remembers her Canadian friends having a little more independence. At her house, “there were more rules and a lot more questions.” Anyone raised Balkan already knows them: Where are you going? What are you going to be doing? Who is going to be there? Have I met their parents? What exact time will you be home?
A spontaneous Friday night plan could require the diplomatic skills of a United Nations negotiator. Staying out late, going to parties or taking trips with friends weren’t necessarily impossible; they simply required a full proposal, supporting documentation, character references and several rounds of negotiations.
“Where Are You From?”
For many Canadians, this can be a simple question. For children of the diaspora, it rarely is.
When someone asks Sophie where she’s from, her answer is Macedonia. Growing up surrounded by her grandparents and Macedonian culture, she considered herself Macedonian. It was only later, as an adult, that “Macedonian-Canadian” began to feel like a more accurate description.
Her maiden name often started the conversation: Terzievski—or Terzievska, depending on whether there happened to be another Macedonian in the room ready to correct you. People struggled to pronounce it throughout her childhood. They would ask how to say it, give it a try and inevitably get it wrong.
Then came the question: Where are you from?
Macedonia.
And often: Where is that?
Rather than diminishing that identity, those conversations have made Sophie more conscious of its uniqueness. “It makes me realize that my Macedonian identity is unique and not familiar to many,” she says, “which makes me somehow even more proud.”
Maybe that is one of the quiet transformations of growing up diaspora. As children, we desperately want our differences to require no explanation; as adults, we begin to understand how precious they are.
Too Macedonian. Too Canadian.![]()
We asked Sophie whether she has ever felt “too Macedonian” around Canadians but “too Canadian” around Macedonians. Her answer required exactly three words:
“All the time.”
Three words that probably have more than a few people nodding as they read this.
You learn to move between worlds without consciously realizing you’re doing it. It looks like English and Macedonian in the same conversation, Top 40 followed by the dramatic opening of Svadba Golema on your Spotify playlist, bacon and eggs for breakfast and tavče gravče for dinner.
Sophie learned Macedonian first, but today English is the language in which her brain instinctively responds. She still understands Macedonian better than she speaks it, and she knows the classic diaspora experience of having a relative speak an entire sentence to you in Macedonian, understanding every word perfectly…and answering in English.
And yet there are certain words English simply cannot replace.
Like lele.
Go ahead. Try translating that one. We’ll wait.
Growing up in Canada may have changed which language Sophie reaches for first, but Macedonian has left its little linguistic fingerprints behind.
There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Food
When we asked Sophie what her Canadian friends would immediately identify as “very Macedonian” about her, she didn’t mention language, religion or national history.
Her answer was much simpler: “Always preparing WAY too much food.”
Few things explain Balkan culture more efficiently. You are expecting six people, so naturally you cook for fourteen. Guests insist they’re full; you become personally offended. Their objections are disregarded, and more food appears.
Hospitality in the Balkans is rarely subtle. It is edible.
That same sense of abundance shaped Sophie’s childhood. Traditional meals kept Macedonia present at the family table, while church, community and the calendar carried the rest of the culture forward. Her family attended Macedonian dinner dances and picnics, went to church and volunteered at Mississauga’s Carassauga Festival of Cultures.
At home, traditions marked the passing of each year: a coin hidden in the zelnik for New Year’s, Easter eggs coloured together, roast pig for Orthodox Christmas, Kolede, fasting before Christmas and Easter, Macedonian music, oro and video calls with relatives back home.
None of these things carried the entire weight of preserving a culture on their own. Together, however, they built a world—a little Macedonia recreated in Mississauga.
Perhaps that is one of the beautiful things about growing up abroad: your roots find ways to reveal themselves. We put on folk costumes and dance the dances of generations before us. We sing songs whose words have travelled farther than we have. We prepare the same foods, repeat the same traditions and, for a moment, feel connected to people and places thousands of kilometres away.
It is a feeling difficult to explain unless you have been lucky enough to inherit it.
“Understanding My Culture Is Understanding Who I Am”
Culture follows us into adulthood in ways we don’t always anticipate, and relationships are one of them. Growing up, Sophie says there was an expectation that she would eventually end up with someone Macedonian. Today, what matters most isn’t simply whether someone shares her background, but whether they understand how deeply that background shaped the person she became.
“My Macedonian culture is something that is very important to me and plays a huge role in my life,” Sophie says. “Understanding my culture is understanding who I am, how I was raised and why I do certain things.”
Participating in that culture, she adds, is a bonus—another way to make sure traditions aren’t lost.
Introducing someone to the Macedonian family, however, is another matter entirely. We asked Sophie which is harder: introducing someone to her family or explaining her family to them.
“Definitely introducing them to the family!” she answered. “Too many questions will be asked! Too many opinions will be made!”
Some cultural traditions, apparently, are in absolutely no danger of disappearing.
The Macedonia We Inherit Through Stories
Nostalgia is rarely grand. We imagine we’ll miss countries and cities, but sometimes what we really miss are sensations. For Sophie, Macedonian childhood can be summoned through the smell of ćevapi on the barbecue, tulumbi for dessert and the sound of Makedonsko devojče.
Some of her connection to Macedonia, however, comes not from her own memories but from those handed down to her. Her father would tell stories about Mount Pelister near Bitola and its natural springs, a place Sophie came to associate with the Pelisterka mineral water she knew growing up.
She still wants to visit it.
There is something profoundly diaspora about wanting to stand somewhere simply because someone you love once stood there. We inherit geography that way: villages through our grandparents’ stories, mountains through our fathers’ memories, songs before we understand their words and places that somehow feel familiar before we have ever seen them.
When we asked Sophie what part of being Macedonian makes her proudest, she didn’t say the food, the music or even the traditions.
She said:
“The community connection.”
Perhaps that is the thread running through all of it—the zelnik in the lunchbox, the peppers in the basement, the two-hour coffees, the questions before going out, the Macedonian words that refuse to leave, and the stories of places still waiting to be visited.
Growing up between cultures can make home difficult to define. Sometimes, though, home isn’t a country at all. It is the people, rituals and memories that continue to find us wherever we happen to be.
And, more often than not, there’s something waiting for us on the table.
Diaspora Diaries
Diaspora Diaries is a Balkanish series sharing the stories of the global diaspora community—the people growing up between cultures, languages and definitions of home. We tell these stories because family histories deserve somewhere to land, and because sometimes the most powerful reminder that we belong is discovering that someone else has felt exactly the same way.
