What do you like to eat?

I was at one of those once-in-a-lifetime parties this summer when someone asked me a question that has been on my mind ever since. It was a fundraiser for my synagogue, and the host was a good friend who is both an outrageously creative and joyful cook and a whiskey enthusiast on another level (you can actually buy his whiskey blends). He designed the entire meal to complement different whiskeys he and his good friend had collected over the years. Every course was complex and flavorful and gorgeous. On a spectacular summer evening, I had what was, for me, the rare opportunity to eat a meal to which I had contributed absolutely nothing: no cooking, no prep, no decorating, no emotional labor, nothing. I just sat and waited as the food came to me. It was delightful.

Of course, there’s a wrinkle when it comes to me and food, or maybe a few wrinkles, not unlike my forehead as I contemplated how to handle graciously my food allergies and other dietary restrictions at an event like this. The host knew about me being a vegetarian, and about my fatal seafood allergy, and about my lactose intolerance. I also don’t drink alcohol very often. I’d been invited at the last minute, and my husband was helping out with serving that evening; I knew the company would be wonderful and that the food that worked for me would be outstanding. I weighed my options: go, and manage my discomfort over anyone making any kind of fuss about what I was eating; or skip it, and miss out on some fun. Continue Reading…

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Kitchen Medicine, Summer Kitchen, and Porch Medicine

My book, Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive, is nearly 2 months old now.

In these two months, I’ve learned a lot about publishing and selling books. I’ve learned how the kernel of intention I had when I set out to write Kitchen Medicine was true and right, and the clarity I have about that has been enough to keep me steady through the things I’ve learned about book marketing that mean selling it is going to be harder than I’d thought. How publishers market to bookstores (or don’t), what kinds of discounts they give to make it financially viable for bookstores to sell books, how the supply chain affects online ordering for some digital booksellers — all of this was a surprise to me. We’re always learning. Continue Reading…

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This Is for the Connections


It happened: my book, Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive came out on March 15, 2022. After all the years of this story being just pixels on a screen and memories in my heart, I held the hardcover copy in my hands and saw that it was real. It was a strange sensation; I thought I’d feel awe or joy or relief, but I didn’t. I felt a lot like I did after Sammi’s final cardiac surgery: wary. I had stood in the waiting room when the surgeon came in to tell us that Sammi was fine, that the surgery had gone perfectly, that her aorta was now clipped to her ribcage and would never, ever compress her esophagus again. My husband shook his hand, and so did I, and the surgeon moved on to his next case while my husband and I held each other. I felt him crying, but my eyes were dry.

They’d given us “good news” before, I’d thought. Let’s just see if this sticks.

All these years later, holding the book I’d written to tell the story, I felt a similar guardedness. I’d done all the things you’re supposed to do to publish a nonfiction book in a crowded marketplace: I’d written for progressively more prestigious magazines and newspapers, built a platform, engaged with other journalists and caregivers of children with eosinophilic esophagitis and congenital heart diseases on social media, got an agent, got a publishing deal, wrote and rewrote, and now, here it was, in my hands, the product of all of it. All I’d ever wanted was to share our story and get it in front of the people who needed it most. And now, the question remained:

Would anyone find it? Continue Reading…

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Something About Nine-Year-Olds

When I was nine and a member of Mrs. Chase’s fourth grade class, the Scholastic book catalogs came home from school with me several times a year. They sold everything from chapter books and sticker books to scented erasers and crossword puzzles, and I wanted ALL OF IT. I pored over them for hours, circling and starring items and eventually presenting my parents with my wish list, organized by catalog. Though they were not wealthy, you wouldn’t know it from the way they indulged my bottomless desire to own more books. Though they sometimes limited the stickers and Hello Kitty pencils, I usually got to order whatever I wanted from the book section. At age nine, they bought me a book called ALL ABOUT ME.

ALL ABOUT ME was a fill-in-the-blank book, full of questions to answer. “What is your favorite color?” “Who are your best friends?” I deliberated, chewing my pencil. The most memorable question, though, the one I answered definitively and without a moment’s hesitation was “What will you be when you grow up?”

Carefully, I printed the answer: “An author.” Continue Reading…

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We’re All Picky Eaters

I am seeing a trend in many of the reviews I’ve begun to receive for my forthcoming book, Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive. I’m not completely surprised by it — after all, I included this theme in some of the synopses I wrote both in my book proposal and in the promotional writing I provided for my publisher — but it has been fascinating to see how insidiously we have absorbed this concept. Mostly written by parents who are reading my book via Advanced Reader Copies (aka ARCs), I am seeing these two words come up again and again:

Picky Eater

Continue Reading…

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