Happy Nowruz
Cooking With Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year
noruz cover
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Najmieh Batmanglij
Hardcover
120 pages
8.5x11
193382316X
$40.00
2008
In Stock


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

Haji Firuz Cookie Cutter


Najmieh Batmanglij is the leading authority on Persian cooking and the bestselling author of the award-winning New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, which the Los Angles Times called “The definitive book on Iranian cooking.” In Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year, Najmieh Batmanglij shares her childhood memories of Nowruz in Iran as well as the many inventive ways she has celebrated Nowruz with her own children as they grew up in America. This book also includes detailed descriptions of the Nowruz ceremonies as well as 25 recipes for cooking Nowruz dishes and pastries with children.




"Combining a cookbook format with straightforward, informational text, this amply illustrated title offers a detailed introduction to the history and customs surrounding Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Beginning spreads cover the holiday’s historical roots and traditional preparations, outlined in clear explanations and activities broken down into highlighted steps. Later pages focus on recipes, starting with safety cautions for both adults and children. From flatbreads to fish strips to Popsicle desserts, the featured dishes adhere to international kid tastes. The covered spiral binding allows pages to remain open while cooking, and the uncluttered, attractive format, featuring color photos of kids in the kitchen and whimsical illustrations, will attract interested browsers. 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, Gillian Engberg

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Table of Contents

Nowruz contents


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Excerpt

Living in America, my family and I welcome every holiday and joyful occasion, and we get more pleasure than ever from celebrating Nowruz – the Persian New Year.

Through the years I have found myself going out of my way to be more creative and inventive when celebrating the traditional New Year ceremonies with my children outside of Iran. Nowruz is a spiritual holiday, not a religious one – it is a celebration of the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature. Everyone can enjoy Nowruz, no matter where they live.

In writing this book, I was inspired by my childhood experiences of Nowruz in Iran in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as by more than twenty-five years of celebrating Nowruz with my own children outside of Iran. I hope that families and children everywhere can benefit from our experience.

This book is suitable for all ages and can be used at various levels – parents and teachers could read it out loud to children under seven years of age, while older children can do everything in the book, including preparing the various dishes and cookies with the help of parents or teachers. Ideally, I would like to inspire the whole family to get together and have fun with the various activities involved in preparing for the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature. It can be a joyful experience for everyone in the family to cook their favorite foods together. I have created simple recipes so that children as well as adults who don’t normally cook can participate in the preparation of the meal.

Most of the recipes in this book are traditionally made during the Nowruz holidays, but I have also added a few of my and my children’s favorites, such as making flatbreads and topping them to make a wonderful pizza. I hope you will enjoy reading this book and cooking from it as much as I have enjoyed working on it.

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Introducing people to the pleasures of Persian cuisine has been a lifelong mission for Najmieh Batmanglij. Her New Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Cerimonies was called "The definitive book of Persian cooking" by the Los Angeles Times, and her Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as one of the Vegetarian Cookbooks of 2004 by the New York Times. She has spent the past 25 years traveling, teaching cooking, and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier and has taught and lectured throughout the United States. She currently lives in Washington, DC, where she is teaching master classes in Persian cooking and is working on a new book for children to cook with the family.


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