Jennifer Felicia Abadi wrote, illustrated and published her cookbook-memoir, A Fistful of Lentils: Syrian-Jewish Recipes From Grandma's Fritzie's Kitchen in 2002, which is now in its third printing in paperback. She describes this as a labor of love, which led to a career change from graphic designer to culinary professional. Barbara Kafka wrote the foreword for the book and it received a red-starred review from Publishers’ Weekly, and was included in the magazine’s Best Books of 2002 edition.

Several articles published in the New York press encouraged Jennifer to pursue the publication of her family cookbook. These articles included: “A Grand Way To Learn” in the Daily News and “Someone’s In The Kitchen With Fritzie,” written by Molly O’Neill for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Once the book was published, several articles about Jennifer’s recipes and the preservation of her cooking tradition appeared in the New York Daily News, as the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Times, Hadassah Magazine,

and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Jewish cooking expert and cookbook author Joan Nathan wrote about Jennifer’s heritage cooking for Newsday. Appealing to an international market, Jennifer has appeared in Canadian Jewish News, the Jerusalem Post, the Danish Mandag, and the German Tachles magazine. Recently Jennifer was featured in an article published in Parade magazine called “When Recipes Tell a Story.”

Her teaching career was launched when she and her grandmother taught a Syrian cooking class for To Grandmother’s House We Go, a television series filmed and aired nationwide on NBC. As a result, Jennifer began teaching a six-week course titled “From Culture to the Kitchen: Three Jewish Cuisines,” where she lectured on the geographical, social, historical, and traditional influences that shaped Moroccan-, Syrian-, and Indian-Jewish cuisines. The other part of the course was hands-on.

Today, she teaches at professional cooking schools, including The Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side (New York) and the Institute of Culinary Education. She also gives private lessons and explains that her area of expertise covers a range of cuisines: Syrian, Lebanese, Libyan, Indian, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Yemenite, Persian, Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Turkish.

Jennifer also assists others write and preserve their own heritage recipes. She created The Traveling Palate, a monthly event were guests experience a series of food tastings while learning about less-common cuisines and cultures. At the gatherings, guests partake in a series of food tastings and learn about unfamiliar cuisines and cultures at New York’s  Kiva café, where Jennifer bakes each week.

She is an active member of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance and is a contributing chef to Chefsline.com and MyFoodMyHealth.com, among other sites.

Jennifer’s artwork appeared in the Passover cookbook Let My People Eat! and Italian Food and Wine Magazine.

She has appeared on a number of radio programs and television shows, including WOR-New York’s Food Talk with Arthur Schwartz; 1450 WCTC-New Jersey World According to Judith; WBAI-New York Beyond the Pale; Burlington, Vermont’s The Armchair Traveler; WHYL-Pennsylvania What’s Kookin’ with the Baker; KCSN-Los Angeles Local Flavor; Spain’s Radio Sefarad/English Corner; and KCRW-Los Angeles Good Food. She appeared on Fox Five News, NBC News, ABC News, and CNN-FN. Jennifer was on Mosaico-TV, a cable network in Brazil.

Jennifer speaks at Jewish book fairs throughout the United States, and lectures on Middle Eastern cuisine. She also gives cooking demonstrations in New York at Macy’s, Whole Foods Market, Balducci’s, Broadway Panhandler, the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue, the Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, just to name a few.

She lives in New York City and her website is www.fistfuloflentils.com