Winner will appear in Taste of Home magazine, cook with Carla Hall, and take home $25,000
I am a cook who is spreading light and love. The money would be helping me help others; grow my retreats and get my book published.
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My signature dishes live in the beautiful contradiction of who I am. I grew up in a kosher home; potato kugel every Friday, cabbage noodles at holidays and those flavors are embedded in my bones. I’ve also spent my life traveling, tasting, and falling in love with the world outside that kitchen. So I do what feels completely natural to me: I honor the soul of those dishes while breaking every rule they were built on. Bacon in potato kugel. Prosciutto folded into the cabbage noodles.
Who is your culinary inspiration?My mother. My grandmother. The mothers before us.
What would you do with the $25,000?Winning this would change lives starting with mine, rippling out. I’d create a scholarship so more women can access retreat healing, because transformation shouldn’t only be available to those who can pay full price. And I’d publish my book; a Jewish woman, a Muslim man, an unlikely love story. It’s a permission slip to love across every line the world draws, and to be a light anyway. The food brought me here. The love is what I’m fighting for.
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