Elissa Altman may have a lot on her plate, but she certainly has not bitten off more than she can chew.

The award-winning writer's insatiable work ethic has led her to embark on three major projects - a writing retreat, a third book, and a new community website - that are all anticipated to launch within the next 14 months.

Known globally for her accolades in the realm of food memoirs, Ms Altman just recently returned from teaching a program at Glin Castle in Ireland, with Irish food writer Diana Henry. Now back home in Dodgingtown, where she has resided for the last 14 years, she has been enjoying getting to frequent her favorite local eateries like The Foundry, Market Place, and Café Xpresso.

Though much of Ms Altman's bread-and-butter, so to speak, pertains to writing stories that center around the kitchen or sharing a meal around the table, she identifies as a writer first and foremost, instead of categorizing herself as solely a "food writer."

"For me, food writing is just good writing as seen through the lens of a specific sensory experience," Ms Altman said.

Throughout her career, she has worked in many facets of the writing industry, including as a book publisher in New York City, a specialty book seller in the food genre, and both a cookbook and non-cookbook editor.

Nearly a decade ago, she felt the stirring to explore blogging for the food writing community. When she told people that she specifically wanted to write long-form entries, however, she was met with many people telling her that no one would ever spend the time to read so much online.

Despite the naysayers, she followed her creative vision and launched "Poor Man's Feast" on the free blogging platform, BlogSpot. Her partner, Susan Turner, supported her new creative direction and helped design the blog's logo and header, which are still used to this day.

The original incarnation of the site started with Ms Altman regularly posting recipes, but eventually it transformed into her sharing deeply personal stories centered around her family, though much of those stories just so happened to have food in the mix. She used the blog to experiment in developing her narrative voice and found that her readers were connecting with her honest accounts.

"It has morphed tremendously over the years," Ms Altman said about her blog. So much so, that she released her first memoir under the same name, in 2013.Poor Man's Feast,

The book, she says, was not a series of blog posts neatly bound like many assume. Instead, it is her recount of life growing up in Forest Hills, N.Y., in the 1960s and 70s.

"I grew up in a very food dysfunctional/disordered household. My father - to whom I was very, very close - was a real food lover... My mother was not. She really had a terrible relationship with food. She found it very threatening," Ms Altman explained. "She had been a model and a television singer in the 50s, so she had a very uncomfortable time with food."

One of her recollections in Poor Man's Feast includes how, before her parents got divorced, her late father would sneak her out every Saturday morning, while her mother was out getting her hair done, to go into the city and enjoy an extravagant meal.

"He kept a lint brush in the [car's] glove compartment and would actually brush the crumbs off me, so my mother wouldn't notice," Ms Altman said. "I came away from that experience with the belief that food for some people is not the same as it is for all people. For some, it's very threatening; for some, it's very nurturing."

Poor Man's Feast also visits Ms Altman's memories with her grandmother, who lived across the street from her when she was growing up.

"I felt very safe in the kitchen when my grandmother was there. She was the first person to ever make things specifically for me," Ms Altman said. "That was sustenance and nurturing to me, just being in the space with my grandmother and watching her."

The story also comes full circle and chronicles her food experiences in her adult life, specifically the first year she was with Susan and how her idea of food changed when they brought their two kitchens together.

Her second memoir, Treyf, provides backstory to Poor Man's Feast and details what it was like growing up when Jewish families were going through an assimilation process. It discusses the push-and-pull of what her father experienced in the 1940s during World War II, with "one foot in modern American boyhood and the other in the orthodoxy of his eastern European immigrant grandparents."

Treyf, a Yiddish term for non-kosher, also colloquially means dirty and unacceptable. With that as the book's title, she says, all the characters who were highlighted in it go through the experience of feeling treyf - including the author, who as a little Jewish girl, is photographed sitting on Santa's lap for the book's cover.

A New Chapter

Since starting to write her newest memoir, Motherland, in late 2016, Ms Altman admits that its topic has been occupying much of her brain space.

"The book grew out of the year-long column I wrote for The Washington Post, called 'Feeding My Mother,' which was not only about actually physically feeding her, but sustaining her," Ms Altman said.

Its first installment in the newspaper's series, aptly called, "I need to feed my mother, but sometimes I think she'd rather starve," scratched the surface of the emotional and frustrating relationship the two share, as seen over a Mother's Day meal out in public.

Her upcoming book also covers the struggles she faced - and continues to navigate through - while dealing with what she calls her mother's "catastrophic accident." The night after Ms Altman returned home from her book tour for Treyf, she received an unsettling phone call from her mother, who told her she had fallen and broken her ankle.

Ms Altman admits that she and her mother are "as different as night and day" and have never had the best relationship, but with no siblings and her mother with no spouse, Ms Altman was the sole person to help her mother recover.

The book tackles the idea of what it is like being left with the moral obligation to care for her mother in Manhattan and be constantly met with less than cooperative behavior.

"It's about being plunged into the position of caregiver for my mom after a lifetime of contention and having a difficult relationship with her," she said.

It is a story many can resonate with, she says, having heard similar tales of women her age who broke free from similar relationships, but after leaving, were called back at a certain point to help take care of a person they had no strong relationship with.

"I think that moral obligation is fluid, and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. The biggest takeaway so far is that we have to find a way to treat the older people around us with compassion and kindness, even if - and especially if - you have no great relationship with them in the past. And that's a hard thing to do," Ms Altman said.

"I feel like this is the story that I had to tell," she added. "I was not going to get out of this life without somehow excavating the relationship that I have had with this woman that didn't even know she was pregnant with me for six months."

Motherland is anticipated to be released in August 2019 and is being published with Ballantine Books, a division of Random House.

Feed Your Soul

Between the constant writing Ms Altman is doing to complete her third book, she is also preparing to lead her first program with 1440 Multiversity called the "Writing Your Story, Feeding Your Soul Retreat."

The main idea surrounding the retreat has been swirling around in her mind for years. It was first inspired, she said, by a trip she took with her cousins and aunt to Greece and Turkey in the late 1990s.

She remembers distinctly how, during that trip, her family hopped into a taxi, and shortly thereafter, her aunt dived into the controversial topic of politics and greatly upset the driver. Looking to diffuse the situation, Ms Altman quickly changed the subject and asked him to tell her about the foods he loved.

"By the end of the trip, I had, written on an index card, his preserve lemon recipe," Ms Altman said.

"That was really the jumping-off point to realizing we all have food stories and food stories really have nothing to do with politics. They have everything to do with the 'modern tribal fire' - with sitting down together and reconnecting not only with our present and the people around us, but our past," Ms Altman explained. "It is a great playing field leveler."

After she started her blog, her idea of bringing people together by talking about food was reaffirmed when she saw everyday people commenting on her posts wanting to tell about their own food memories.

Despite knowing for a long time that she wanted to do a writing and food-based program, it was not until this past February, when she attended author Krista Tippett's event at 1440 Multiversity, that she was able to really envision where to host it.

1440 Multiversity, says Ms Altman, "is a magnificent, breathtaking retreat center nestled in the hills of the redwoods outside of Santa Cruz, California. There's yoga, there's meditation, there's incredible local California food… the accommodations are beautiful, and it really lends itself to being a great meditational space."

People who attend her two-day program will partake in short, guided meditations, yoga, and hiking, as well as specific writing prompts and sensory food experiences led by Ms Altman. Living in such a fast-paced culture, she hopes the retreat will allow people to truly taste the foods they eat and connect with their present and past in doing so.

Conveniently, "Writing Your Story, Feeding Your Soul Retreat" will take place this November, shortly after Thanksgiving.

The timing of it is perfect, Ms Altman says, because "people are coming away from the table - for better or for worse - with stories that are either positive or negative. What better place and time to bring the stories to the program and work?"

While Ms Altman hopes to one day be able to launch her food writing program locally in order to be accessible to more people, she has begun developing a website where people across the globe can come together to discuss their food stories.

The site is being named after her upcoming retreat called "Writing Your Story, Feeding Your Soul" and will allow people to continue to fan their modern tribal fire and truly savor life.

Those interested in learning more about Elissa Altman's upcoming writing retreat and the scholarships that are available can visit 1440 Multiversity at 1440.org/programs/writing-your-story-feeding-your-soul. For more information about Elissa Altman, visit her blog, poormansfeast.com, follow her on Facebook and Instagram, and e-mail her at contact@writingyourstoryfeedingyoursoul.com.