Thirteen years ago, Ramzi Quiseyeh had a dream- when he was picnicking with his family on his land in Al Makhrour valley in Beit Jala he decided to turn his farm into a restaurant. But Ramzi's dream was interrupted last May when Israeli army jeeps and three bulldozers came at six in the morning and demolished the restaurant under the premise that its construction was illegal. 

A book on the Gaza Strip could brim with stories of war, a failed peace process and broken ceasefires, of naval blockades and homemade rockets. But not this one. "The Gaza Kitchen Cookbook: A Palestinian Culinary Journey" is unlike any other book on Gaza or, for that matter, any cookbook you have ever come across, taking readers inside the traditions and cultures of an ancient land while refusing to shy away from the region's painful past. 

The Gaza Kitchen, a new book by Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt, challenges the pervasive image of Gaza as destitute, war-torn and bereft of any possibility of a vibrant culture. 

On January 22, Nasser Abufarha, the founder and director of Canaan Fair Trade, will be receiving the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade's first annual Leadership Award for Citizenship. The award will be presented in San Francisco at the Fancy Food Show. 

Hajar Hamdan lives with her mother, sister and her sister's two children in the concrete jungle of Deheishe refugee camp near Bethlehem in the West Bank. Yet Hamdan is growing enough vegetables on her roof to feed her family and pass the surplus on to her neighbors. Hamdan's family is one of 15 in Deheishe to have a greenhouse on their roof as part of a project which is now being extended to other Palestinian refugee camps. 

Fans of Tanoreen's Middle Eastern food — admirable eggplant, sumac-tinted sujuk, beet pickles, pillowy hummus, lamb kibbeh, and tabbouleh laden with mint and parsley so green and evenly chopped it seemingly emerged from a lawnmower retrofitted with razor sharp ginsu knives — will be happy to know chef/owner Rawia Bishara is writing a cookbook. 

A small group of trainee chefs in the Gaza Strip are preparing to open a restaurant staffed entirely by the hearing impaired. The new cooks learned their skills in an environment where lessons were taught with hands rather than words. 

As home to the largest concentration of refugees within historic Palestine, Gaza is an extraordinary place to encounter culinary traditions, not only from hundreds of towns and villages that now exist only in memory-depopulated and destroyed during the Palestinian exodus of 1948-but also from the rest of Gaza's long history.