What Maqlubeh teaches us about emunah, trust and letting go There are some recipes that ask you to cook. And there are recipes that ask you to trust. Maqlubeh is the second kind. In Episode 5 of "Finding Assaliya," where I cook my way through my Lebanese grandmother's recipes, the instructions begin simply enough. You roast the vegetables. You prepare the rice. You season everything carefully. Then you begin to build. Layer by layer. Meat. Vegetables. More vegetables. More ri

On my grandmother’s Fatoush, Jewish peoplehood & the beauty of what we carry forward. I recently had the sweetest opportunity to cook with Batel from Batel’s Kitchen, and share one of my grandmother’s recipes with her: Fatoush. There was something especially meaningful about making this salad together. Batel’s Kitchen is rooted in Middle Eastern culinary traditions, bringing time-honoured flavours into simple, nourishing recipes with a modern sensibility. Her approach is abou

A few weeks ago, some friends and I were out for an evening walk when we came across a chaotic wall of growth along the path. At first glance, it was easy to dismiss as overgrown weeds. But tucked inside were young grape leaves, branches from a plum tree, blackberry bushes, and all sorts of other growth tangled together. We stopped to look. And then we realized there were grapevines. Luckily, it was a quiet walking path, away from traffic and exhaust, so we picked a handful o

There are recipes that teach you how to cook. And then there are recipes that teach you how to remember. As I’ve been sharing my journey of cooking the dishes of my Lebanese grandmother, I’ve realized we do not just inherit recipes. We inherit a way of seeing the world. A belief that ordinary meals can become sacred. That feeding someone is one of the oldest ways of saying... I’m glad you’re here. The recipe can tell you how much olive oil to pour or when to add the tomatoes.

Rosh Chodesh Elul A gentle preparation for the month of return There is a particular feeling that comes when the year begins to turn. The light changes.The evenings begin to arrive a little earlier.The calendar quietly whispers that something is coming. Rosh Chodesh Elul is that whisper. Elul is the month before Rosh Hashanah—the beginning of a sacred period of reflection, return, and renewal. It is a time to begin preparing not just for the holidays, but for the person we wa

This week I made my grandmother’s Sheikh el Mehshi—Lebanese stuffed eggplant—for a group of girlfriends coming over for our summer local Climate Corps meeting. As I was cooking, I had one of those thoughts that probably says more about me than the food: so many of my favourite Lebanese recipes are basically vegetables being used as vessels. Stuffed grape leaves. Stuffed zucchini. Stuffed cabbage. Stuffed eggplant. My ancestors really looked at produce and thought: yes, but wh

August’s Shabbos Read: The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad What remains when everything we build our identity on is stripped away? This month I’ve been been reading the work of Suleika Jaouad. What inspires me most isn’t simply that she survived cancer. It’s the question her story leaves behind. Where does our worth come from? Is it productivity? Appearance? Career? Being needed? In Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika writes about her leukemia diagnosis in her twenties. She descr

In this week’s parsha, the Torah begins: “V’haya eikev tishme’un…” “And it shall be because you listen…” (Deuteronomy 7:12) Most translations render eikev as because or as a result. But Hebrew words often carry more than one layer of meaning. The word eikev/akev in Hebrew means heel. I don’t think that’s accidental. Three meanings. One invitation. Because. As a result. Heel. ⸻ We live in a culture that loves breakthroughs. The dramatic before-and-after. The life-changing deci

There are some meals I adore but almost never make. Not because they're difficult. Because they're complicated. There's a difference. Lasagna has always lived in that category for me. Layering. Multiple bowls. Noodles to boil. A sink full of dishes before dinner has even begun. And so, despite loving it, I rarely made it. Lately I've been thinking about the idea of friction points. Not the things we don't value, but the tiny obstacles that quietly keep us from living the life

Wednesday at sundown marks Tisha B’Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av, a day of mourning, and a date that has become synonymous with calamity in Jewish history. This date marks the destruction of First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Second Temple by the Romans in 70CE, as well as the fall of Betar which brought the devastating end to the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. Centuries later, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain was decreed on Tisha B’Av

After a long while—and many, many cookies—we have finally perfected our house chocolate chip cookie. By we, I mean me and my three boys. And by perfected, I mean we have made enough batches to learn from our mistakes. There were the cookies that came out far too flat because we had added too much butter. There was the time I turned on the KitchenAid without properly affixing the mixing bowl, and the entire thing began to spiral off the stand, sending cookie batter everywhere.

There is a teaching I learned as Tisha B’Av approached... On the Shabbat before the fast, as we light our candles and welcome peace into our homes, we are invited to envision and pray for the world to come. Not just Olam HaBa as a distant idea, but the world we long to help build. A world repaired. A world restored. And meditate on this as we light and admire the flames of the Shabbat candles. A huge part of my life is exploring connection—not only the connection within our

Month by month. Moon by moon. Every month, the moon disappears. For a moment, the sky is dark. And every month, without fail, the light returns. Rosh Chodesh—the beginning of the Hebrew month—arrives not at the full moon, but at its absence. Judaism asks us to begin not when everything is bright and obvious, but when hope requires trust. Perhaps that’s why Jewish tradition has always treated Rosh Chodesh as more than the first day of the month. It is an invitation to begin ag

For a long time my life existed in separate rooms. There was my work — counselling, mental health, healing. There was my volunteer life in the Jewish community. My spiritual life. There were the quieter parts of me too — gardening, cooking, caring about the natural world, the people I met through that. None of these things were untrue. But they lived beside each other rather than together. Lately something has been changing. The lines between these parts of my life have start