Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive

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Melinda Strauss is the author of Eat Jewish, over 100 recipes that blend Jewish heritage,

modern flavors, and family traditions.

Melinda has amassed a following on social media

at the real Melinda Strauss of over 1.2 million, a space where people feel comfortable asking

questions about Judaism, learn about her family's customs, and can't get enough of her Jewish

recipes and stories. Prior to her social media success, Melinda was a full-time food blogger

with hundreds of recipes on her website, Melinda Strauss.com. Welcome, Melinda. Thank you so much

for coming on Totally Book to talk about Eat Jewish, over 100 recipes that blend Jewish heritage,

modern flavors, and family traditions. Congratulations. Thank you so much for having me.

You're so welcome. I think this is the first book I've ever read that had a forward by a parent. Your dad wrote the forward. That was so sweet. Now my mom will be all jealous if I ever show this to her. Well, now you're just going to have to do it at some point. We're going to spend a friend. Yes. So tell me about the cookbook. Tell me about why you decided to start with your dad and how, yeah, we'll just go from there. Okay. So I will start by saying that this cookbook was definitely inspired by my TikTok, which is so cool because I've been a food blogger since 2011. So I've been food blogging for a really long time. But with TikTok, I found my voice. I found my voice as a Jew. I found my voice as someone

who isn't just talking about food, but talking about Judaism in general, answering people's

questions. And part of that is sharing recipes because food is my life. And people would just like ask me, what's this recipe, what's that's recipe? And they started actually naming my recipes. And it started with my daughter's broccoli. And they started calling it Nora's broccoli. And I was like, there's something here. And I had randomly made a video and just I just threw everything out into the universe. And I said, one day, if I ever write a cookbook, I'm going to have Nora's broccoli in it. And this incredible woman reaches out and she's like, I have a friend who's an agent. Can I introduce you guys? And it was just this like from, from, you know, from God moment where everything was just working out perfectly, exactly when it was supposed to. And I went

from someone who was just sharing recipes, someone who had finally figured out what I wanted to share

and knew that publishing a book would actually mean something, not just to other people, but to me.

And my father has been a big part of my social media. People are like, oh, we should have his own

account. I'm like, he doesn't even use a phone to make phone calls. It's not happening people, but he is constantly my videos and educating people. He loves to share and speak. It's definitely where I think I get my gift from. So when I was thinking of who's going to write the forward, it made so much sense that it would be for my dad. It's lovely. It's just so, so nice, amazing. Tell me about the first time you made a TikTok video. Oh my gosh. Well, my daughter, it was during COVID, I really towards the beginning of COVID, was like, I want to be on TikTok. And I was like, if I'm going to let her be on this platform, I know nothing about, I want to be on it too. And I always think of Gary V sits in the back of my head, like with all of his advice chirping. And the best advice, he's always like, get on every platform. Just throw, again, just throw everything out into the universe. You never know what's going to stick. And so I started sharing. Actually, I think the first video may have been with my daughter, but it was just some

sweet little, I don't know, silly video. And at the beginning, I had no idea what the heck I was posting or who I was talking to. But I figure that's a new platform that I'm on and nobody follows me there. And I could just say whatever I want. And it kind of just started building from there because the more you share, the more you find yourself. So what, when you said you found your voice,

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