Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered

In the 1930s, Lithuanian-born chef and vegetarian pioneer Fania Lewando ran a popular restaurant in Vilna, Poland, that served vegetarian cuisine to poets and artists, including acclaimed modernist painter and illustrator Marc Chagall. Being a vegetarian in the 1930s in Eastern Europe was unusual, but in 1938 Lewando published The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, a volume of more than 400 recipes without an iota of meat or fish. The book was also filled with impassioned essays on healthy eating.
Lewando was a noted nutrition advocate and founded a “dietary school” that taught Jewish women healthy cooking techniques. Fleeing the Nazi invasion of Vilna in the fall of 1941, she and her husband were captured by Soviet soldiers and died sometime thereafter.
Nearly eight decades after it’s publication, authors Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman discovered Lewando’s trove of recipes at a YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) book group and recreated her volume in an English translation entitled The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen.
Mazur and Waxman come to Charleston Sunday, March 6 as part of the JCC’s Charleston Jewish Bookfest to present the story of this fascinating cookbook and make some of Lewando’s recipes during  a live cooking demonstration. Attendees will be treated to delectable samples, a book signing, and dessert reception.
Cookbook authors Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman will be in town Sunday, March 6 at 3 p.m. at the  Addlestone Hebrew Academy Auditorium, located at 1675 Raoul Wallenberg Blvd. Seating is limited! Advance tickets available for $14 for the general public and $10 for Hadassah, Dor Tikvah, and JCC members at www.vilnaveg.brownpapertickets.com. For more information, email sandrab@charlestonjcc.org.