24 | DECEMBER 1 • 2022

W

hen Vera Newman
decides she wants
something, she
makes it happen.
She’s started several
businesses without formal
training, run a catering
business with no prior
experience, written, illustrated
and published a bestselling
cookbook with no formal
culinary education, and
recently started a floral design
company with no previous
training.
Newman’s drive and
determination were evident
when she decided it was time
to marry.
She grew up in an observant
Jewish family in Panama.

Her mother’s roots were both
Sephardic and Ashkenazi, and
her father’s family, of Syrian
and Moroccan ancestry, had
lived in Israel for generations.
After high school, Vera
attended a women’s seminary
in Jerusalem for six months,
and when she returned to
Panama, she decided it was
time for a shidduch (a match).
She set up an account on a
Jewish dating site, Saw You at
Sinai, and quickly established
a relationship with Jacob
Newman, who had grown up in
West Bloomfield. His parents,
Judy and Rob Newman, now
live in Farmington Hills.
Jacob visited Panama
several times over the next

few months while the couple
communicated daily by phone
and email. They got engaged
a few days after Vera arrived
in Michigan to meet Jacob’s
family. They married in 2012 at
the Dearborn Inn, when Vera
was 20 and Jacob was 25. The
day after the wedding, they
moved into the Oak Park home
where they still live.
Children quickly enlarged
their family. Dinah is now 8,
Levi, 7, and Yosef, 4; the baby,
Aliza, was born in August
2021.

TEACHING
HERSELF TO COOK
Newman says it’s no
exaggeration that she didn’t
have to cook Shabbat or
festival meals for two years
after the wedding because she
and Jacob were always invited
out by family, friends and
neighbors. When it was time
to reciprocate, she had to teach
herself to cook.
“I wasn’t working at the time,
so my job was to take care of
my young kids and ‘play’ in
the kitchen,” she said. “I would
invite people for Shabbat,
and our guests were always
impressed with my food and
how I presented it.”
She loved developing recipes
for the Sephardic dishes she

remembered from childhood as
well as international fare.
Cooking and serving food
on beautiful table settings
allowed her to express her
artistic nature, and friends
raved about her holiday meals
and parties. In 2016, she started
a private catering business
and, a year later, a recipe blog
on Instagram, which quickly
gained thousands of followers.
The name of her blog derives
from the marble she had used
to redecorate her kitchen and
incorporated in other rooms
as a design element. She came
up with @marblespoon for the
Instagram account, which now
has close to 14,000 followers.
When Newman started work
on the cookbook, Marblespoon,
a name well known to her
Instagram fans, was an obvious
choice for the title.
Newman says her husband
pushed her to produce the
book. She wrote it and took
the photographs illustrating it
during the COVID slowdown,
even as she guided her older
children through online school.
Newman knew the book
would need photos of the
featured dishes. With small
children at home, it wasn’t
practical for her to bring
prepared dishes to a photo
studio several times a week
for a formal shoot. Nor
did she want a professional
photographer in her home
taking pictures of every dish
she prepared for the cookbook.
She was thrilled when Miriam
Pascal Cohen, another kosher
food blogger, flew to Detroit
from Lakewood, N.J., to coach
Newman on food photography.
The Marblespooon Cookbook,
published by Menucha
Publishers in Brooklyn, came
out in 2020 and has been a
great success, selling close to
5,000 copies. It is available

NEXT DOR

VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION

Self-taught cook creates popular
kosher cookbook and blog.

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Self-taught cook creates popular

Flair in
the Kitchen

TEACHING

few months while the couple

LEFT: A page dividing
chapters from the
Marblespoon Cookbook