About

photo by Lauren Volo

I’ve worked in food for about a decade now. I apprenticed as a pickler at Adamah Organic farm. I sold apples and heirloom tomatoes at New York City's Greenmarket. I developed and launched Negev Nectars, a boutique online retailer that imported organic olive oil and other gourmet foods from small-scale farmers in the Negev desert. And back in 2012, I teamed up with Liz Alpern and Jackie Lilinshtein to found The Gefilteria, a venture to re-imagine Old World Jewish foods. 

I'm also a writer, and not surprisingly, I write a lot about food and have done so for some great publications, from The New York Times to The Atlantic to The Forward (check out a select list). I spent an entire year researching Israel's underground pork economy, I've written about what happens when religious food goes industrial, and I've gone on hunts around New York City for the best knishes, to name a few areas of focus. I edited a website of personal stories about complicated relationships to our food, a memoir of a Holocaust survivor, and I've also written a full-fledged cookbook with Liz Alpern called The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods. 

I've been lucky enough to travel around the world talking about some of the things I do, most recently through a national book tour. Some of my favorite experiences have been while speaking at conferences in far off places like Helsinki, Stockholm, Melbourne and Montreal. 

​