After all the enthusiasm and support we received initially, we were sort of surprised to discover how difficult it was to find a publisher to take on the kind of book we wanted to write: hence the hiatus in updates.

At last, Helena Cobban of Just World Books (in collaboration with OR Books) has stepped up, and this week we're signing a contract with her.  Hooray!  So "The Gaza Kitchen" will finally have a proper outlet in a handsome full-color large-format book, including over 50 of the recipes we collected in Gaza along with personal stories, anecdotes about farming and food autonomy, and insights into daily life in the Gaza Strip.

While the book itself won't be in print and available until mid-2012, now that we know what the final format of the book will be we are reactivating the blog: http://gazakitchens.wordpress.com/

Through the blog, we invite all of you that want to participate in the creation of this book - and have a little time and appetite - to help us out by kitchen testing some of our recipes.  The more kitchens they are tested in, the better!  Throughout the next few months we will be posting draft-recipes, and we encourage you to try them out and let us know what works for you and what doesn't. 

We're very excited to get this project moving again!

m&l

First of all, sorry for the long lapse in communications. Laila and I are busy processing all the field research we did in Gaza: translating, transcribing, rereading and organizing all the interviews, recipes, etc... Its going very well.

We are also starting to write articles based on our research in various english language publications. We'll cross post them all at our blog:
http://gazakitchens.wordpress.com

As for the world of kickstarter, I would like to encourage you all to have a look at, support, and spread the word about this full length documentary, which I have been involved in for the last couple of years. It is a beautifully filmed intimate portrait of several young men in their long and frustrated journey from the Indian Punjab to Europe:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1498498353/stranded-in-the-strait-documentary-film

Hope all is well with all of you,
yours,
Maggie

Hello dear backers,

I don't know if Kickstarter etiquette allows for encouraging backers of one project to look at another. But our friend and colleague Maurice, an American filmmaker who has been living and working in Gaza for the last year, has just launched a Kickstarter project to support his fantastic video work. I very very much encourage you to have a look, and send the link along to friends and acquaintances:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/938933977/inshallah-a-video-journey-through-the-gaza-strip-w-0

Another thing: for those of you who are supposed to recieve postcards from Gaza and haven't yet sent us your addresses, please do so now: Laila is leaving in just a few days, and we'd like to send those off to you before she goes.

As for the work: we are now sifting through hundreds of hours of audio files, translating and transcribing them. Hopefully in the next weeks we'll have a couple of articles to share with you, first glimpses of what the book will contain.

For now, I leave you with this photo of Jamal, a charming fellow and the last guy in Gaza to still make Qidraa the classic, traditional way, learned from his grandfather: rice, meat and spices sealed into a clay pot and slowly turned in a blazing stone oven. The pot is then artfully shattered, and the buttery soft rice pours out.

Dear Backers,

The marathon period of fieldwork comes to an end. There is so much more to do... somehow we feel like we were just getting started... but we got a pretty extraordinary amount of material to work with in just less than a month.

One practical matter that involves you: according to the rules of Kickstarter, they don't give us your addresses to send stuff to until the funding period is over (9 Sept). But since I am leaving Gaza now, and Laila will be here just another week or so, we thought it would be good to take care of some of the backer rewards before we go.

The packages (spices, bags, etc) we will send from the US and/or Spain since packages sent from Gaza often get searched or waylaid by the Israelis, but the postcards we did want to send out from Gaza directly. So if you are supposed to receive a postcard, could you please send us your mailing address now, so we can send it before we leave?

Now that we are no longer doing breakneck fieldwork we'll have more time in the coming days and weeks to send updates...

Again thank you all,
maggie and laila

Dear backers,

First of all, we can't thank you enough for the support and enthusiasm you've offered this project. It means the world to us to know that there are other people out there that appreciate and understand what we are trying to do here, and why.

We wish we could share more of the fieldwork with you: the moments, the characters, the meals... One of the things that continually amazes us is how excited everyone is to talk about food. Of course everyone assumes a foreigner with a camera in Gaza is going to ask about politics, and everyone has their "official" answer ready. But when instead you start asking about food: what do you eat? how do you make that? where did you learn it? the response is first surprise and then delight, as everyone leaps into the discussion, making impassioned defenses of this or that regional variation, eyes bright.

We had an intuition that it would be good to talk about food in Gaza because it is one of the few things that people control in their own everyday lives here. We sensed it would be interesting because it is one of those topics in which everyone is an expert and everyone has an opinion. And because, in a place with so many problems, it is a welcome change to talk about something pleasurable. But I don't think either of us expected that our intuition would prove so totally right on.

We will be here doing full-tilt field work for just another 10 days or so. We need that last little bit of funding to reach our goal: please forward the project info to your friends, families and colleagues. Meanwhile, we will update whenever we can, though the electricity cuts make internet access very unreliable.

Again thank you for your support, and spread the word,
Maggie and Laila

(in the photo, members of the Zeitoun neighborhood womens cooperative debate the uses of the pulp left over after stuffing zucchinis)