December | 2016 | Jenn Hall

Spoonful: When We Gather – Dinner with Abi and Mahesh (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

WINNER OF A 2018 ASSOCIATION OF FOOD JOURNALISTS AWARD: BEST FOOD COLUMN When dinner is nearly ready, Abigail Boehm beckons her granddaughter Tavia to the dining room. The precocious eight-year-old girl climbs atop the table crafted by Abi’s father from antique floorboards. White candlesticks go into candelabras adorned with intricate patterns. Then together, grandmother and child light the wicks. Read more… Published December 7, 2016

Categories: food & drink, when we gather • Tags: recipes, when we gather

Paste Food: Naomi Duguid Offers a Taste of Persia

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

If there is a cookbook author who I would follow anywhere, it is Naomi Duguid. In her latest, Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan, she invites us into the home kitchens of this diverse culinary region. With prose that reflects deep on-the-ground research and the workings of an ever-curious mind, the guide opens a window on to a rich culinary blend. Cooking through this beautifully photographed cookbook and travelogue, one encounters dishes adapted […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: interviews

Paste Food: Philadelphia’s Taste of Hope for Refugees

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

It is close to midnight on a September Tuesday, and at the Philadelphia International Airport several refugee families take in their first impressions of the city. There is the whirring baggage claim, strangely desolate at this hour. There are lingering taxis and shuttles that loop around the terminal like insects drawn to light. It takes a moment to get one’s footing, firm land rendered strange after days spent on planes and other modes of transport. Luckily, there are guides. Waiting […]

Categories: food & drink • Tags: refugee experience

Paste Food: Beach Plums are the Bittersweet Flavor of Summer’s End

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

When foraging for beach plums along Sandy Hook, New Jersey, it is wise to heed the park ranger’s warning. Bearing deep-purple fruit, the plants come dressed in a tangle of poison ivy that goes scarlet this time of year – strangely enticing. It is nearing sunset in maritime forest at the northern tip of the park and I cannot stop picking. I am covered in mosquito bites and sunburned in fire-red arcs. I reek of bug spray, salt and sweat. […]

Categories: food & drink

Remedy Quarterly: Dad’s Culinary Playground

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

Issue 21: Work + Play : Remedy Quarterly We hear the sound of Dad’s cooking first. Forks and knives tremble in a metallic clamor, grabbed in fistfuls from their segmented homes. Pots and pans scream as they’re pulled from cabinets, as they’re Tetris-ed out from precarious piles. Forks and knives tremble in a metallic clamor, grabbed in fistfuls from their segmented homes. Pots and pans scream as they’re pulled from cabinets, as they’re tetrised out from precarious piles. Water gurgles […]

Categories: essay, food & drink • Tags: baking, essays, recipes

Inside Jersey: Feast at the Flea Market

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

The Columbus Farmers Market started in 1919 as a cattle and horse auction and, in 1929, moved from town center to its present location along Route 206. Now spanning 200-plus acres, it is the oldest and largest flea market in the Delaware Valley. Its cavernous buildings house a produce market, a garden center — and just about anything else you can imagine. Amid the vintage LPs and used “good-luck horseshoes” (just $1 each), a world of food awaits. Read more… Published in […]

Categories: food & drink, travel • Tags: road trips

Paste Food: Love & Redemption on the Mid-Atlantic Pop Tart Trail

December 10, 2016 by jennhallwrites

The childhood ritual that would culminate in Pop-Tarts typically began at a Chicken Holiday off the Jersey Turnpike. See three of us under fluorescent light: my father, my younger sister and me. The table is a tangle of grease-sod napkins, the room humid with flash-fried air. Above us looms a cartoon hen in a party hat. My sister and I are drunk on chicken skin, eyes bleary from ogling the cranes over Port Elizabeth, robot dinosaurs. Behind dark sunglasses, my […]

Categories: essay, food & drink, travel • Tags: baking, essays, road trips

Jenn Hall

Best American Food Writing Series Notable.

Monthly Archives: December 2016

Spoonful: When We Gather – Dinner with Abi and Mahesh (2018 AFJ Award-Winner)

Paste Food: Naomi Duguid Offers a Taste of Persia

Paste Food: Philadelphia’s Taste of Hope for Refugees

Paste Food: Beach Plums are the Bittersweet Flavor of Summer’s End

Remedy Quarterly: Dad’s Culinary Playground

Inside Jersey: Feast at the Flea Market

Paste Food: Love & Redemption on the Mid-Atlantic Pop Tart Trail