Biography
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, and having dropped out of The High School of Music & Art where she majored in fine art, Moskowitz found herself drawn toward the punk rock scene of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1980s, embracing first a vegetarian diet, then veganism. The experimentation and adaptation required for her new diet led to developing her skills as a cook and as an inventor of her own recipes. She volunteered with Food Not Bombs, an anarchist and punk-rock centered organization that provides free vegan meals to the homeless and needy.
The inspiration to create her own cooking show came while watching the Food Network and wondering to herself why there were no vegan shows. According to Moskowitz the show used the title The Post Punk Kitchen to signify the feeling of being "older and facing the conundrum of growing up and making compromises that their eighteen-year-old selves might hate them for". The show was popular for its laid-back approach and unscripted dialogue. Bands played on the show, and even helped out with the cooking. The Post Punk Kitchen was co-hosted by Terry Hope Romero and aired on community access television in both Manhattan and Brooklyn between 2003 and 2005.
The success of The Post Punk Kitchen led to the compilation of a cookbook, Vegan with a Vengeance, in late 2005. The recipes, rather than relying on expensive and heavily processed meat substitutes, use readily available and inexpensive ingredients. The book also includes multiple references to the punk-rock subculture with Moskowitz visibly sporting a t-shirt from pioneering British anarcho-punk band Crass on the book's cover.
In 2006, Moskowitz and her former co-host, Romero, created a cookbook consisting entirely of vegan cupcake recipes, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which was named Cookbook Of The Year by VegNews magazine. 2007 saw the release of yet another book, Veganomicon, which bills itself as the "ultimate vegan cookbook." Moskowitz has since written three more books, Vegan Brunch (2009), Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (2009) and Appetite for Reduction (2010).
In April 2008, she relocated from New York to Portland, Oregon, then to Omaha, Nebraska in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Isa Chandra Moskowitz
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