“Birthdays are celebrated, jobs won, and boy problems dissected over food. It’s not enough to go and not eat; people expect that something material will be shared. The alchemy of transforming a kosher apple into an unkosher apple cake—the heat, the care, and time invested—does not just matter to ancient rabbis, it actually still matters to most everyone. I have interviewed a Saudi prince in the rooftop restaurant at Dubai’s Burj Al Arab and a North Korean refugee sleeping on the floor of a suburban condo, and both cared very much, almost as a condition of the interview, that I eat some-thing they laid out for me.”

Samantha M. Shapiro is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in a number of other publications including Wired, Slate, Mother Jones, Glamour and the Stranger.