In Diana Abu-Jaber’s memoir, the language of baklava, food functions as a universal language, battleground, and peace treaty rather than a means for survival. While the work reveals a teenage girl’s rebellion against her Jordanian father’s traditions, a deeper cognitive struggle unfolds beneath the surface, a conflict and struggle best illustrated by conceptual metaphor theory. This theory, developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in 1980, states that humans understand abstract concepts by subconsciously mapping them to tangible, and physical experiences. In Abu-Jaber’s work, the dominant and generative metaphor is: culture/identity is food. This conceptual framework frames the characters’ thoughts, inflames their conflicts, and ultimately charts the narrator’s path toward a hybrid self. By analyzing chapter thirteen that carries the same tittle of the book, we see how Bud, the father, is trapped in the sub-metaphor “food is a fading memory,” while Aunt Aya champions the idea that “food is a creative act,” and the narrator’s journey is one of cognitive remapping.