Alix Wallis a freelance writer in Oakland, Calif. where she specializes in Jews, love and food.
Alix Wall
By Alix Wall
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Food Welcome to Pot Shabbat
Definitely not your bubbe’s matzo balls; these have THC in them. On a recent Friday night in the San Francisco Bay Area, seven 30- and 40-somethings gathered in a cozy home for Shabbat dinner. They lit candles, chanted Kiddish and ritually washed their hands before ha-motzi, the prayer over the bread. But the first bite…
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Food Taste Testing ‘Forest Feast Gatherings’ for Sukkot
This is an occasional column in which the writer evaluates a new cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing the dishes with friends and asking her guests what they think of the results. She recently cooked her way through “The Forest Feast Gatherings: Simple Vegetarian Menus for Hosting Friends & Family” (Abrams) by Erin…
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Food ‘Gefilte’ Gets an A on Holiday Taste Test
While we weren’t intentionally looking for one, a theme quickly emerged at our recent taste test of “The Gefilte Manifesto,” and that theme was: “I don’t usually like” blank, “but I like this.” It started in the very first moments of our gathering, when our friend Fred took his first sip of the Celery Collins…
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Recipes Exploring ‘The Book of Lost Recipes’
It’s telling that the first thing you notice when you open “The Book of Lost Recipes: The Best Signature Dishes From Historic Restaurants Rediscovered,” by Jaya Saxena (Page Street Publishing Co.), is that it’s dedicated not only to the author’s parents, but also to someone named Matt (whom we can only presume is her partner)…
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Food Taste Testing ‘A Taste of Rome’
This is an occasional column in which the writer evaluates a new cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing the dishes with friends and asking her guests what they think of the results. She recently cooked her way through “Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors & Forgotten Recipes from an Ancient City,” by Katie Parla and…
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Life After 18-Year Romance, Leaders of California’s Aquarian Minyan Wed
(JTA) — When Shoshana Dembitz and Abigail Grafton first met, they spent several long moments gazing into each others’ eyes. But this wasn’t a love-at-first-sight occurrence. Rather, the two were attending a Shabbat service in which participants were split into pairs to look into each others’ eyes, an exercise to create intimacy within the group,…
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Food Pita Is Hot, Hot, Hot at New San Francisco Falafel Spot
The first thing that caught my eye when I entered the new Sababa restaurant in San Francisco was an old advertising poster for Jaffa oranges — showing an Arab orange vendor sitting on a blanket smoking a hookah with a fellow Arab who has ridden up on a donkey. It harkened back to a different…
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Food Taste Testing ‘Israel Eats’
This is a sporadic column in which the writer evaluates a new cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing them with friends and asking her guests what they think of the results. She recently cooked her way through “Israel Eats” by Steven Rothfeld with Nancy Silverton (Gibbs Smith). A food photographer in his mid…
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