The short version
Where the handscame from.
My babushka Sura was born in 1925. She survived the Holocaust at sixteen by running to Siberia, was widowed at fifty-two, then moved in and raised me. She is where iron fist, golden heart comes from — I wrote that about her, and it stuck to everything I've built since.
My mama Dora died when I was around twenty. The message my father carried to me was four words long: go to culinary school. I enrolled the day after mourning ended.
I started Girl and the Kitchen in 2012, five months pregnant, on my feet sixteen hours a day until thirty-seven weeks. Twelve years later I've cooked on television, catered Chicago kitchens from downtown to the North Shore, and watched my clients' kids grow up at my table.
Then I was diagnosed with ADHD at forty-two — after my son was diagnosed first, and I sat in that appointment hearing my whole life described back to me. I got honest about what I wanted the back half of my life to look like.
I changed everything on the inside first. The outside followed.
Food healed me in the most primitive of ways.