Apr 28, 2017

NBC’s Today profiles Zaman staffer bridging cultures and faiths with food

Amanda Saab, nationally esteemed food blogger and director of Zaman’s Culinary Arts Program, was featured by NBC’s Today show this month for using her passion for cooking to bring people of different faiths – quite literally – to the table.

The April 13 installment of “Soul Searching Today,” the show’s Passover and Easter week series, showcased Saab’s idea to use hospitality – an important practice in Islam – to combat negative rhetoric about the faith. As hosts of “Dinner With Your Muslim Neighbor,” Saab and her husband, Hussein, use social media to invite people from diverse communities to their home to share a meal and learn more about one another’s traditions. The couple have hosted a dozen dinners to date and Saab says the candid conversations they encourage are breaking barriers and fostering friendships.

An innovator in Mediterranean-American fusion cuisine, Saab was a contestant on Season 6 of Fox TV’s MasterChef and her cooking blog, Amanda’s Plate (www.amandasplate.com), is followed by thousands. She is a graduate of the Wayne State School of Social Work and also serves as director of Zaman’s Bayt Al-Zahra urgent needs program.

Check out the Today show segment here.