Recently Featured on CNN’s Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain-The Gaza Kitchen Tour is Coming to Olympia!

Come watch the demonstration, have lunch and learn how to make traditional Gazan cuisine while being taken on a cultural journey through life in Gaza. Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt are co-authors of the award winning documentary cookbook The Gaza Kitchen: a Palestinian Culinary Journey, which has been praised by the likes of Anthony Bourdain, Claudia Roden, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

Nov.3rd @ 11am-1pm at The Flaming Eggplant in The Evergreen State College (2700 Evergreen Parkway NW- CAB 304, Olympia, WA. 98505)

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Author Laila El-Haddad, a key voice for understanding the situation in Gaza, was recently featured in a segment of CNN’s Parts Unknown with CNN food and travel host Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain says of The Gaza Kitchen,

“An important book on an egregiously under appreciated, under-reported area of gastronomy. This is old school in the best possible meaning of the term.”

Through her blog and book Gaza Mom and her work as a journalist, documentarian, media activist, public speaker and policy advisor, El-Haddad provides rare insight into the human experience of the region. Originally from Gaza, she now lives in Maryland.

Maggie Schmitt is a researcher and activist working in various media (writing, photography, video, and participatory methodologies) on the intersections between ‘big’ politics and ordinary daily life. Based in Madrid, she has worked in various countries around the Mediterranean.

When their cookbook project launched in 2009, the authors wrote,

“…food is the essence of the everyday. Beyond all the discourses, the positions and the polemics, there is the kitchen. And even in Gaza, that most tortured little strip of land, hundreds of thousands of women every day find ways to sustain their families and friends in body and spirit. They make the kitchen a stronghold against despair, and there craft necessity into pleasure and dignity.”

This event, sponsored by The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and TESC Students for Justice in Palestine, is FREE and open to the public. Parking at The Evergreen State College is free on weekends. There will be food and cookbooks for purchase at the venue. Come learn to make traditional Gaza cuisine and be taken on a cultural journey through life in the Gaza Strip!

For more information, please contact [email protected] or call 360-754-3998.