Week 4: Direction
I have picked a direction! I’m going with the Jewish cookbook series. I’m really excited about this idea, I can’t wait to start working more on it. I’d like to focus on the three Jewish sects for each book (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi), and talk about the history behind each dish and where it’s from. My end goal is to inspire the younger generation of Jewish people to learn more about their history and culture, and connect more with it through making food.
Today in class (Wednesday, June 5), DJ brought in a little collection of cocktail recipe books, and I was intrigued. It’s such a small, perfect way to package these books, easy to carry with you and categorized by alcohol. The thing that stood out to me the most was that the books had no images. I’ve always assumed that cookbooks need to have images because that’s the biggest part of cooking/making drinks — the visuals. But the books were still successful without images. I’ll definitely still use photos of the recipes in my books, because I think that food recipes are more complex than drink recipes and seeing the end result would be helpful to the readers.
After seeing that book series, though, I had another idea for my capstone. I’m thinking of making a series of Jewish cookbooks for select/popular Jewish holidays with select recipes in them that correspond with the holidays. It would be a set that younger Jewish people would be able to buy that would help them cook for each holiday. For example, the Passover book would include a list of foods that are off-limits for the duration of the holiday, as well as recipes for foods that use allowed ingredients such as matzah brie, matzah ball soup, etc. I think this idea could be more unique and needed than my other idea, as everyone celebrates these holidays and knowing certain recipes to make for the holidays might be fun and more inclusive than talking about recipes from different divisions of the Jewish race. As a Jewish person who recently moved out of their parent’s home, they might not have the resources to know what recipes to make for each holiday, or what traditional/significant recipes are used each holiday, and having these books on hand would make it easier.
(Thursday, June 6) I just got off the phone with my mom, who is currently in Israel, and I asked her for any good recipes that my safta makes, to send them my way. I told her about both ideas, and she’s more interested in the holiday idea, so I think I am going to go in that direction. Tomorrow is the holiday Shavuot, where apparently you eat a lot of dairy, so my aunt will be making a ton of different foods and hopefully sending me lots of pictures and recipes! I’m going to wait to publish this until I have some photography of the food from my family.
Below are some photos taken by my family of some of the food eaten this Shavuot:
