Feast in the MIddle East

Hello Virtual Cooking Family,

Hope all is great in your world! As I write I am battling a nasty cold, wrapped in a flannel blanket and appreciating the newly blooming cherry blossoms outside my window, giving me a teaser of spring to come.  I’m taking sips of my black tea fragrant with dried sage and wild honey, which I learned how to create in the Palestinian olive groves of Deir Ghassana. So now that I have a little downtime, I will attempt to catch you up on what I have been up to, as I have been busy on the media circuit.

First I made an appearance back in December on Silicon Valley’s Arab American television show, where I chatted with Suha and Salwa about why I did this project in the first place, these ladies were so much fun to talk to and the show just flew by:

In Part one of the interview, we chatted about how and why my career took a dramatic turn from journalism to food, how my parents reacted to this shift, and why I felt it was important to share our cuisine with a worldwide audience:

In Part 2, I  featured three of my favorite recipes from the cookbook. I picked these three dishes in particular because they are so easy to make, yet make such an impact when entertaining guests:

As an aside,  I am marveling at the response to my cookbook around the world! I am absolutely loving the photos many of you are sending me with the “Feast in the Middle East” cookbooks on your various kitchen countertops, giving me a glimpse of your own cooking worlds. Whether the books are nestled on granite, formica, cute checkered tablecloths, or natural wood–my heart is full knowing my cookbooks are finding cozy homes.

I truly hope the book is inspiring you to try something new you can enjoy with your loved ones, to me that is a reward that is priceless. I would love more selfie photos of you all with the books so I can reshare them on Instagram on Facebook if you aren’t the shy types!

On the dark side of self publishing, I have seen what Jeff Bezos and company do behind the scenes to undercut authors so much it makes it almost impossible to survive.  This is why I encourage people to buy the cookbook here directly from my website, so I can afford to do another printing after this first batch is sold out. Amazon takes 55% off every sale, and passes distribution, shipping and freight costs to the authors. So in essence by the time a person purchases the book from Amazon, I end up with only $1.50 per book. If you decide to buy the book or refer the book to your friends, please guide them to purchase the book here to the cookbook tab on the upper left corner of this page, as this will help independent authors like me survive, and be able to afford a second print once the initial run is sold out.  Thanks again for your support and look out for the Fox video soon!