ABOUT

I was given the gift of reading and storytelling from my father, and the gift to write from my mom. The rest was a circumstance of just being born in the right time and place. Directly after high school, I lived in Israel on a kibbutz in an Ulpan program to learn Hebrew and work on a farm. I loved the structure and it was a complete awakening to meet kids (I was still a kid at 17) from all over the world. I connected to the farming, worked in the dairy with the cows on some days, picked olives and grapefruit on others and got the chance to meet people from countries I had never heard of before. I loved it and felt deeply at home.

The following year, I returned back to the states to attend Hampshire College. This was a five year experience where I learned a whole lot of nothing, but it gave me the confidence to ask many questions and the ability to create good teams of capable and supportive people, which I found to be an exceedingly important skill for later in life. Following Hampshire, I migrated with a bunch of friends out to San Francisco. This at that time was a small haven for college grads with no particular skillsets, and we all did blue collar work of some kind. I worked in a ton of restaurants and catering companies. I eventually started my own small catering business for people studying the Book of Miracles in Harbin Hot Springs. Eventually, I found a full time job as a teacher of English as a Second Language at a Refugee Resettlement Agency. My students came directly out of refugee camps from Laos, Viet Nam, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. I loved the work, and I learned as much from them as they did from me.

In about 1993, I had a best friend visit who suggested I come back to New York and apply for graduate school. It had never been a twinkle in my eye to get a graduate degree in anything, but I decided it was time for a change, and sent an application in the mail to New York University. In a few weeks, I learned I was accepted, with a scholarship and my one way ticket flight was booked. I ended up at the department of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at TISCH. I literally remember asking someone how to shut down a computer, I had never used one in my life and now I was in a graduate program that was entirely dedicated to digital technology. The founder, Red Burns was a visionary. She wanted students from various backgrounds to bring to the technology different ideas and disciplines. It was 1997 that I graduated and together with my colleagues got dumped into corporate America in the nascent days of the internet when every company needed a web site, yesterday. And from there, please refer to my professional background on LinkedIn.

During my time in New York, I discovered the Slow Food Organization, and became the Convivium Leader of Slow Food New York City in the late 90s. This was a wild adventure which connected me to leaders of the food, wine and restaurant world for great parties and hundreds of tastings both in New York and in Italy. I was also then inspired to start Foodevents.com. The site was used to post events world wide and I became a journalist of sorts, with a ticket to anything I wanted to attend in exchange for the publicity. This was directly after 9/11. Still in the early days of the internet, there was a crash in the industry where everyone was laid off from work so to pay the rent I started to lead Culinary Walking Tours of all 5 Boroughs of New York City. We went to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx for Italian food, Jackson Heights, Queens for Indian, Brighton Beach Brooklyn for Russian and of course Chinatown in Manhattan. On the first tour, there was one person, but it was still fun.

On the second tour, I had a journalist from The Washington Post. She ask to go “bar hopping” on Arthur Avenue and to visit Jackson Heights, Queens. We had a great time, and she wrote an article. From there on it, I was running an operation with bus loads coming in for pastrami sandwiches from Katz’s deli on the Lower East Side to Elder Hostelers who wanted to drink vodka and eat borscht in Brighton Beach. It was a fun ride, but the digital industry picked up after about a year, and I got back to work.

Never did I expect to be a cog in the wheel of corporate America. The industry at this time was filled with creative people who designed platforms intended to represent the best parts of our lives and culture. I naturally gravitated toward working on internal designs for back office workers which I thought were more complex and interesting logically than consumer applications. I worked fairly constantly for about 20 years, until after Covid and the passing of my mom when I finally retuned back to France.

About 15 years ago, I discovered The Gers in France as a Workaway volunteer on a black pig farm in Montesquiou. It was run by a very intrepid British couple, with whom I remain friends to this day. I lived in the stone pig sty, next to the mother that had just given birth to about seven little piglets. I helped in the garden, put up a silo and fixed fences with other volunteers. It was fun work and we got to learn from the very best of farmers. I just loved the region for the preservation of the medieval villages and one might say a way of life. I created a mental bookmark, and decided to return back to explore the possibility of moving here. When I returned, the farm had just sold its very last pig to the butcher and the farmers started a catering and event service company, Farm to Table Kitchen. I also met a real estate agent, and visited my first home in France as a potential resident.

From there, I took a leap of faith and started T aste of Gascony to come to France on a working visa as a micro-entrepreneur. This feels like a culmination of my life experience as described above in one unified piece that combines so many interests as well as my passion for food, wine and culture. And I also love to take photographs.

All the work on the Web site is available for sale. I am also available for photo shoots for events, portraits, pets (dogs particularly) and celebrations of all kinds. You can email me to learn more.

À bientôt!

Jenine Lurie