A Recipe for Healing

A Recipe for Healing by Lori Gardner for Jewish Food Experience

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Jews and food are inextricably linked. For some Jews, family meals and Jewish holiday celebrations inform eating and dining preferences throughout their life. Many Jewish professionals in the food industry will tell you that childhood experiences of cooking with a grandparent or parent helped guide their careers.

Meredith Goldberg grew up on Long Island, where she began baking alongside her grandmother at the age of three. Tuesdays were baking day, when Grandma Ruthie would cover the entire table with her confections, including sesame circles, apple cake, zucchini bread and carrot cake.

Jewish holidays were a big deal growing up. “My grandmother and Aunt Sadie would make gefilte fish from scratch over Passover. They would make their own horseradish, so no one could go in the kitchen. It was like your eyes were bleeding. So that formulated the way that I view food and why I view it as such an experience,” says Goldberg.

Goldberg cherishes her food memories, and she still gravitates toward Jewish foods like chopped liver, lox, whitefish and brisket as comforting reminders of her childhood.

Goldberg credits those early experiences with leading her to a career in the DC food and hospital industry. She is the director of marketing and communications at the luxurious Jefferson Hotelat 16^th and M Streets, Northwest. Her job includes promoting the hotel’s three restaurants: the Michelin-starred Plume, the Quill cocktail lounge and Greenhouse, an informal space serving breakfast and lunch.

However, in 2011, at the age of 32, Goldberg was diagnosed with breast cancer, and food was the last thing on her mind. Read the rest of the story on the Jewish Food Experience website.