Najmieh Batmanglij 
Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year 

Nowruz – the Persian New Year – is one of the world’s great festivals, a full month of activities celebrating the earth, the arrival of spring, and the rebirth of nature. Most of all, it is a festival for families. Children and adults alike can share in preparing special meals, decorating the house, and performing the many ceremonies that welcome the New Year. This book is a guide to customs thousands of years old yet as vital as ever – enjoyable by families no matter where they live or what their beliefs.

About the author

Najmieh Batmanglij, hailed as one of “Seven Immigrant Women who Changed the Way Americans Eat” by The New York Times, has spent the past 40 years cooking and adapting authentic Persian recipes to tastes and techniques in the West. Her book, Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies was called "The definitive book on Persian cooking" by The Los Angeles Times. Her Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey was selected as “One of the 10 best vegetarian cookbooks of 2004” by The New York Times; and her From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table won the Gourmand Cookbook Award for the world’s best wine history book of 2007. Her books also include Joon: Persian Cooking Made Simple, and Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets, about which The Wall Street Journal wrote, “. . . recipes are only part of the experience. The essays on cultural history, tales of personal encounters and 450 photos provide as deep an understanding of this ancient, intriguing, and wonderfully diverse country as you are likely to find anywhere.” Her most recent book is Persian Cooking for Dummies published by Wiley and Sons. She is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier, and lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches Persian cooking, and consults with restaurants around the world.