Michaele’s Articles

The Memoir That Found Me: Michaele Weissman on Food, Marriage, and Identity

Published by LitHub

“Letting go of my sense of literary insufficiency, led to discoveries related to structure and storytelling.”

Rye Bread Is My Secret to a Happy Marriage

Published by The Nosher

“What started as a gulf separating John and me—the rye bread we favored, the traditions we inherited—wound up binding us even more closely together. This discovery radiated in all sorts of directions, deepening my sense of kinship with my husband and also deepening my understanding of where I come from.”

How Francis Lam, son of immigrants,
became The Voice of America’s Food Culture 

“As a young man in Hong Kong, Francis Lam’s beloved grandfather was hard-pressed to support and feed the children he’d left back on the mainland. When his circumstances changed, Lam says, he devoted his life to food: eating it and sharing it with his loved ones.”

Soul  Searcher: Michael Twitty is finding himself through the roots of African and  Southern Cuisines

On Friday, Jan. 22, as Snowzilla bore down on the nation’s capital, peripatetic culinary scholar Michael Twitty was in South Carolina to tape a video, and he found himself in a jam.

Former La Marzocco CEO wants to bring modernity to Italian coffee

“Like inked art on a barista’s forearm, high-end cafes are showing up everywhere. On both coasts and in the middle, over the past two decades Americans have embraced better brew, turning what was once a tiny niche into a mighty market.”

At 40, La Cuisine is the area’s oldest independent kitchen store

Nancy Purves Pollard discovered her life’s work in a kitchen disaster.

"We only have room for the best," says La Cuisine owner Nancy Purves Pollard, here with her favorite pot for cooking a chicken.

A Coffee Connoisseur on a Mission: Buy High and Sell High

GRANADA, Nicaragua — Geoff Watts turned up recently at the ceremony capping Nicaragua’s 2006 Cup of Excellence coffee competition in the steamy 500-year-old Convent of San Francisco here.

The New Entrepreneurs

It all started because Nick Cho’s wife, Suzy, wanted a really good cup of coffee.

Luca Trabocchi: A 10-year-old with a passion for cooking, and parents who foster it

It’s 8 p.m. on a recent Wednesday in the busy kitchen at Fiola restaurant downtown. A 101 / 2-year-old boy with blue eyes, large hands and a dimple in his chin skillfully swirls dollops of porcini crema onto shiny porcelain plates.

Regional Rye Breads

Rye bread is not and never was a single something. Regional variations have always abounded, across Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Russia—places where rye grows more easily than wheat.

Living Light

A Bethesda photographer and glass artist creates the minimalist ‘tree house’ of her dreams.

A Moveable Feast

LizBeth Neumark is sitting at a makeshift table in a temporary staging kitchen at the landmark New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue.

coffee bar

NICHE MARKETS; For the Coffee Palate Too Refined for a Certain Large Chain

You may think these entrepreneurs are crazy when they talk about selling coffee beans for 40 bucks a pound.

Roasting Raises the Coffee Bar

It’s hot, and I’m weary. I want coffee, but not hot coffee.

Desktop Dining

You probably eat lunch at your desk.

On Ramadan’s Sweet Side

As a little girl in Cairo, Aida Mady helped her mother bake cookies for Eid al-Fitr, the feast celebrating the end of Ramadan.

Guys and Dals

They call themselves Nala Paka after the mythological tale of an Indian king who was famed for his cooking.

Something’s Brewing in Office Coffee

Doug Cohen’s boss at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics calls him “our ayatollah of coffee.”

Winning contestant Patricia Walls receives congratulations from fellow bakeoff contestants, Stacey Blisset Boyd (right) and Pamela Parker (center) after she won 1st prize in the chocolate chip cookie bakeoff. YWCA Chocolate Chip cookie bakeoff took place at the Stratford University Culinary Arts in Falls Church.

For YWCA, A Chocolate Chip Cookie Revival

When the National Capital Area YWCA ceased baking its famed chocolate chip cookie in 1981, the dismay of some cookie loyalists rivaled the response of baseball fans when the Washington Senators left town a few years earlier.

The Reciprocity Rap

Ask someone who enjoys cooking and entertaining how often their guests reciprocate, and the response is usually a startled laugh that suggests you’re on to something.

Fairfax residents Christine and George Lively, pictured here with their children, Carl, 4, Georgia Mae, 8, and Lance, 21 months, say they have people over more often for dinner than they are invited to others' homes.

Is Direct Trade Fair

“In April of 2008, journalist Michaele Weissman released her groundbreaking book God in a Cup: the Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee. Now, in a three part series on Sprudge, Weissman revisits specialty coffee’s effort to alter the relationship between coffee growers and buyers by introducing innovative, relationship-based sales practices known collectively as ‘Direct Trade.'”

Show Me the Money: Direct Trade Volume 3

“Does the Direct Trade sales model produce the kind of tangible results Daday calls for? Does it put more money in the pockets of farmers and improve the quality of life in their communities? Looking for concrete answers to these elusive questions, Michaele Weissman follows the money trail in this final installment of her landmark three-part series on Direct Trade in 2017.”