Sara Levine Rosenblum has spent 15 years putting together her talents and passion for food and writing as a trained chef and editorial director, including more than a decade of experience at the Food Network.
Rosenblum, a Chevy Chase resident, loves the stories we tell through food and has authored several cookbooks that share the hidden details of culture in our dishes, including one for Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C., the synagogue her family attends.
She launched a business called SLR Creative in 2023 with the stated mission of bringing the “recipes and food stories” of clients to life.
What food-related work are you doing now?
When I started thinking about striking out on my own, I knew that I wanted to be doing something in food outside of corporate media. And I had put together this community cookbook for my son’s preschool around a year-and-a-half ago at this point, to celebrate the school’s 30th anniversary, and I just became obsessed with this project. I loved it so much. We collected recipes from the entire community … And I just kept thinking back to that, I loved working on that so much, could I parlay that into a business to work on cookbooks in this way? That is a big part of my business now — helping businesses and nonprofits put together these types of cookbooks for different initiatives or fundraising. I’m also helping some chefs and other food people with their cookbook concepts.
Where did your passion for food come from?
I was always a food person. I mean, [being a] food family is probably not unusual in Jewish families. I grew up here [D.C.], and I linked my connection to food. Back to my maternal grandmother, who, they said she was a real balabusta, and they didn’t have much, but she always hosted every Jewish holiday in their modest apartment in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And it was just so much food, multiple courses. She was an incredible cook and baker. I always think back to her for my original connection and love of food and cooking.
And when she passed away, my mom and I put together what was really the first cookbook I worked on. My mom and I put together a cookbook of all her recipes that were so beloved by all her family and friends, and we had it printed up and gave it to everyone at her unveiling a year after she passed. That is just such a treasured little book for us and for all her friends and their kids and their grandchildren.
How did you get interested in food writing?
I was a college journalist; I was a high school journalist. I was the editor of the school newspaper [in high school], got to college and started working on the paper as just a beat reporter and somehow, I don’t know how, I pivoted into arts and culture college magazines, but they covered food, writing about restaurants — that is exactly a melding of all my interests. So, I started writing about restaurants for the first time there.
With all the food-based writing you’re doing and sharing these stories, what is the impact that you hope to have?
I think my whole overarching mission behind what I’m doing now is that everyone has a food story to tell. And there’s just so much to uncover in our food. And I think that with the connection to Judaism, Jewish culture is really what I mean by that, so many of those stories are told through food. That was my connection all through growing up was just more of a cultural thing. It wasn’t religious. My grandmother, although she was observant, her main connection to Judaism was through these meals and holidays that brought all our family together.
I think the story behind all of that is it just tells so much about a culture. And it applies to all these cookbook projects that I work on. It’s been so cool to talk to everyday home cooks and people who have such interesting backstories, that it can uncover so much about their family and their upbringing and their ancestry just through a dish. So that is what I find really fascinating and gratifying.
What is the local Jewish connection you have professionally and personally?
I’ve always just been interested and drawn to Jewish cooking and stories about Jewish food, especially now in the past several months with everything going on in the world that I found myself rereading other Jewish authors who I’ve long admired … I love working with Jewish organizations for these types of projects. That’s why the Sinai thing was so special to me, getting everyone’s recipes. Everyone has a different story, and everyone has a slightly different recipe, and it’s just so cool to read and find the points of connection and the points of diversity.
I grew up in a Jewish family: My first point of Jewish connection was going to the preschool at Adas Israel. I made a best friend there, and we started going to Jewish summer camp together every summer so it’s a presence in my life. I met my husband at college. And he was a Jewish kid from Louisiana, where he was the only Jewish family in this town. So, a very different upbringing from mine.
For us raising our own children, we have two boys, 5 and 8, it’s important to both of us that they have Jewish community and identity. The nursery school at Temple Sinai has been our home for the past six years. My youngest just finished up there. So that’s where I worked on that cookbook. And the community we built there; we’ve made some of our best friends.
I didn’t grow up with a tight-knit Jewish community like that, but my kids are experiencing it, which is cool, and so I got more involved in Sinai, outside of just nursery school. I now serve on the board, and I’m mostly involved in committees related to serving and engaging young families and that’s important for the future of not just that congregation but Jewish life in general.