MembreAdam_Schell

The offspring of a fashion model mother and a rabbi father (a long story), ADAM SCHELL grew up more inclined toward football pads than the kind of pads used for writing. Stories, however, from Moses and King David to those of Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton, played nearly as vibrant a part of Adam's youth as did sport. Love of the game aside, the on-field success (allow me to drop the charade and switch to the first person) I experienced in high school was not exactly matched when I was a Big Ten linebacker playing for Northwestern University (though I was named a B'nai B'rith college football Jewish All-American. Honest!). With dreams of a pro career about as likely as Anthony Bourdain going vegan, I tucked my diploma in some long-lost trunk, loaded up a rucksack with a bushel of Marquez, Vonnegut, Robbins, Hemmingway, De Bernieres and Kerouac and hit the road in quest of good things to eat and do

I picked grapes and olives in Tuscany, coffee beans in Guatemala, ate a slice of pizza in Sicarcusa, Sicily that was, for a Jewish boy originally from Queens, tantamount to sighting the Virgin Mary, learned a great deal about the quality of peaches in the South of France, observed firsthand the value of fresh sardines to old men in Lagos, Portugal, noted how smoked paprika distinctly scents the breath of Bulgarians, apprenticed under a master French chef in NYC, produced award-winning short films and commercials (my moment of working for THE MAN), received a master's degree in creative writing from Antioch University, got fired as a restaurant critic for writing an April Fools review about a Tibetan-Mexican restaurant famous for their fermented yak urine tea and then, in an improbable turn, became a yoga teacher (a not entirely uncommon phenomena for New Yorkers who relocate to California).

These days, I live in Los Angeles with my wife and young son where I write and teach yoga at the Hollywood YMCA. Learn more about me and Tomato Rhapsody at: www.adamschell.com