As many Palestinians, I’ve been struggling with how to share here. My work, my passion, my joy is food and writing about it, cooking it, celebrating it. I should be talking about my new book Boustany with excitement. But these past months, I’ve felt a heaviness every time I think about posting.

How can I promote recipes or a cookbook when people in Gaza are being starved, when children, women, and men are being killed? Food is meant to nourish and bring life, yet it’s being used as a weapon through forced hunger. That reality is impossible for me to ignore.

This book is a piece of my heart, and I’m grateful it’s in the world. But I can’t separate it from my grief and anger over what is happening to my people. I’m holding this tension between celebrating the work I’ve created and mourning the ongoing devastation in Palestine.

Food has always been political. It tells the story of survival, of resistance, of care. That’s why I continue, even with a heavy heart, to write, to cook, and to share, because I believe in the power of food to keep culture alive, even when everything else is under threat.