About the Book
Nowruz – the Persian New Year – is one of the world’s great festivals, a full month of activities celebrating the earth, the arrival of spring, and the rebirth of nature. Most of all, it is a festival for families. Children and adults alike can share in preparing special meals, decorating the house, and performing the many ceremonies that welcome the New Year. This book is a guide to customs thousands of years old yet as vital as ever – enjoyable for families no matter where they live or what their beliefs.
Happy Nowruz offers twenty-five fun, easy, and innovative Nowruz recipes, with lots of photos to show you what to do. This is an ideal guide for parents, teachers, and kids – age six and older – to know more about the origins of Nowruz and to get everyone involved in preparing for the arrival of spring by:
• baking Haji Firuz cookies
• germinating seeds in eggshells
• coloring eggs
• making a Nowruz garland
• jumping over fires
• setting the Haft-sinn (seven-s) holiday table
• planting narcissus and hyacinth bulbs
• selecting and buying goldfish
• banging spoons for trick-or-treating
• cooking the Nowruz dinner
• enjoying the Outdoor Thirteen picnic
Reviews
“Much more than just a recipe collection, this compendium of customs and cookery about a holiday rarely covered in books for youth will be of great value.”
BOOKLIST
Excerpt
About the Author
NAJMIEH BATMANGLIJ, hailed as “the guru of Persian cuisine” by The Washington Post, has spent the past 30 years cooking, traveling, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. The 25th Anniversary Edition of her book Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies was called “This summer’s most coveted tome” by Vogue. Her Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as “One of the 10 best vegetarian cookbooks of the year” by the New York Times; and her From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table won the Gourmand Cookbook Award for the world’s best wine history book of 2007. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches Persian and Silk Road cooking, and consults with restaurants around the world. Her most recent book is Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year. Her web site is www.najmieh.com.
