Diaspora Dinners

07/02/2025

05/19/2024

Eggplant over scallion sauce with red peppers cooked for an entire afternoon. Vegan version of Romanian steak. Thanks to everyone who came to the Catskills dinner last night- I truly felt like a time traveler for a moment.

04/19/2024

Minor henge

04/11/2024

You don’t wanna be like Alec Baldwin, do ya?

04/09/2024

Some snacks from a party we catered last week.

I love all forms of toast, so underrated. It needs more attention - maybe some unbearable food media person should rebrand toast as twice-cooked bread and get toast some time in the spotlight.

03/27/2024

Still Life.

03/15/2024

My challah is rising in the sunshine coming through the kitchen window. Our family will have friends over tonight for Shabbat dinner where we’ll have roasted chicken and lemony vegetables and chocolate babka and fruit and olives and who knows what else. It’ll be a nice time in the glow of the candles and the kids will all run around and make a mess, then we’ll put them to bed and clean it up while drinking the last of the wine from the bottle and chatting while we sweep and scrub. I’ll toss the trash into the dumpster, break off one last piece of babka, and go to bed.

It’s nauseating to know that my pleasant little life is so different, from that of others. That others are being denied life itself.

Across the world there is no bread in Gaza. There could be, easily, but there isn’t. The collective punishment of starving over a million people is unacceptable. Ceasefire now.

I don’t know how to say Shabbat Shalom without saying stop the war.

03/08/2024

Shabbat Shalom.

Sometimes while I mix the challah dough, and check on its rise, I think about what’s taking place as it rises. The yeast is doing its work - creating air in the dough. When there’s enough air, or breath, the dough can be shaped and baked. Later, smelling the fresh bread, tearing into it after the motzi, and biting into a piece, it’s all air, breath, bread. The living yeast gives breath to the bread, breath makes it nice, and we speak out our breath in the blessing. What makes challah work is the breath of life.

Shabbat Shalom. Everyone deserves bread, and everyone deserves the breath of life. Ceasefire now and forever.

03/01/2024

Shabbat Shalom from myself and this eggplant that’s getting cooked to damn near burnt in olive oil.

02/26/2024

Partial image of the most bagels I have ever made at once. Hoping to make even more sometime soon but I may need to invest in an improved mixer first.

02/20/2024

Olive oil cake with cherries, pineapple, and walnuts from a bit ago for Tu BiShvat.