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03/02/2008 Archived Entry: "Come See Me"

Allow me to market myself today.

Please take a look at The Maven’s Appearances. I will be all over the Tri-state area in the next few months – New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, even a little trip to Pittsburgh – to promote Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, my new book. It’s now about to be put on your bookstore shelves, and it is already being sold through Amazon, Jessica’s Biscuit, Barnes & Noble on line – all the internet book sellers. .

Starting March 12th at the Adult School of Montclair, New Jersey, I will be making the rounds, presenting my illustrated lecture on Yiddish cuisine, and signing books. Everyone is welcome. And I think everyone will be interested in what I will be talking about and showing pictures about. I am hoping it will be one of those “You don’t have to be Jewish” things.

“Cuisine,” by the way, is not a word I use much. I prefer the English “cooking.” But I used it pointedly in the last paragraph because I want to give the food of my heritage and of my youth – my soul food – some dignity. “Cuisine” has become the word Americans use to do that. Cuisine might, however, be the last word you’d associate with Yiddish food. My people’s food is often the brunt of jokes and, while I was working on “Jewish Home Cooking,” a famous magazine food editor, who asked me what I was up to, actually called it “disgusting.”

I wrote the book because I wanted to validate the food of my forefathers (I know that sounds corny but it’s true) and to shine new light on its many merits.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Jewish food jokes. I collect them. But my general message at my lectures will be that traditional Yiddish food can be much more contemporary, even healthful, and, of course, delicious, than it gets credit for. Putting food in cultural context is my specialty. I was recently told by an anthropologist that I am also an anthropologist. I was flattered but I don’t know about that. What I like to do is make connections between what people cook and eat and what people and their lives are like in general. At my lectures, and in my cooking classes and at my demonstrations, I tell stories – both personal and cultural – that, I hope, I hope, I hope, enlighten you on that score. The knowledge always makes the food taste better to me.

As I said, on March 12, at 7 p.m., I will be debuting my new illustrated lecture at the Adult School of Montclair, New Jersey. Then, the next day, the 13th, it’s on to Paramus, N.J. at Chef’s Central, then, on Sunday, I’m in Manhattan at the 92nd Street Y, then I’m back to New Jersey, to Marlboro for a Monmouth County Jewish Federation event, then it’s Hartsdale in Westchester for the other Chef’s Central store, then Temple Sinai in Stamford, Connecticut, then back to Highland Park, New Jersey, then … well, I’m very busy so please, as I asked at the beginning, take a look at my appearance schedule. Some events have admission fees, some are free. I hope to see many of you over the next several months.