Around the Table with the Catholic Foodie: Middle Eastern Cuisine

Bring the Holy Land to Your Kitchen Table! The savory cuisine of the Holy Land will bring new flavor to your table and new meaning to your faith. Gather round and let the incomparable Catholic Foodie, Jeff Young, show you how to prepare delectable recipes, while he shares fascinating stories of food and faith in the Holy Land.

From family recipes at home... to recipes gathered from professional chefs in the Holy Land... to new Holy-Land-inspired dishes, The Catholic Foodie will show you how he cooks family-friendly meals in his kitchen and how you can cook these easy-to-follow recipes in your kitchen too.

You’ll Be Encouraged & Inspired to Get Back in the Kitchen and to Gather Your Family Back Around the Table.

+ 78 Easy-to-follow recipes, including additional explanations of ingredients and cooking methods that may be new to you.

+ Insights on faith, travel, pilgrimage, the Holy Land, food in the bible, and ways that we can grow in faith around the table.

+ Beautifully captured photographs of each recipe to give you an idea of what the final dish should look like.

+ Encouragement and inspiration for busy families to make family mealtime a place of real encounter.

“Jeff bridges faith, Holy Land, and table through approachable recipes and insightful anecdotes." – Chef John Besh, Restauranteur, Author & Philanthropist

“Jeff Young's Catholic Foodie apostolate remains one of my favorite resources for nurturing and encouraging Catholic families.” – Lisa Hendey, Founder of CatholicMom.com, speaker & author

Jeff Young is the founder and producer of The Catholic Foodie blog and podcast. Born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jeff has lived in New Orleans for most of his adult life. He is a friend of many of the city's famous chefs, and co-hosts the Around the Table Food Show on CCR 690AM (New Orleans) and 1380AM in Baton Rouge. Jeff is also a conference speaker and has spoken on topics ranging from "growing in faith around the table" to "using social media in the New Evangelization." Jeff's first book is titled "Around the Table with The Catholic Foodie: Middle Eastern Cuisine," which is a collection of 78 recipes and stories about food, faith, and family in the Holy Land and around your kitchen table.

Jeff's thoughts on what The Catholic Foodie is all about:

"God created us to seek communion - communion with himself and with others - and one of the primary ways that we experience communion is around the table... the table of the Eucharist at Mass, and the family dinner table at home.

"From Genesis to Revelation, food plays an important role in God's relationship with his people. As a matter of fact, the Book of Revelation shows that we are all heading for a huge feast... the wedding feast of the Lamb!

"So The Catholic Foodie is about food, but it is not just about the food. It's the shared meals. It's the families around the table. It's communion.

"Today we are too busy for our own good. We are constantly on the run, and we eat on the run too. One of the major casualties of our hectic lifestyle is shared meals. From a purely natural standpoint, we can see this is not good. The results of eating on the run range from less time spent with loved ones to eating food that is just not healthy. But from a spiritual perspective, taking food out of the context of a meal has greater consequences. When we gather around the table for a meal, we share not only the food, but ourselves. Eating is a very intimate experience.

"Sharing a meal brings people together, literally and figuratively. Gathering around the table is one of the few times in life we sit face-to-face with people and have an opportunity to really connect with them.

"And here's the neat thing: God made us this way."

Find recipes and Catholic culinary inspiration at http://CatholicFoodie.com.