Isa Chandra Moskowitz is a Jewish American author of several cookbooks, including Vegan with a Vengeance, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Veganomicon, Vegan Brunch, and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.
Born at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York on February 3, 1973, Moskowitz found herself drawn toward the punk rock scene of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1980s. The idealism and open mindedness of the punk community introduced her to and found her embracing first a vegetarian diet, then veganism. The changes she made in her diet necessitated that she learn to cook vegan meals. 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 furthered her skills by working with Food Not Bombs, an anarchist and punk-rock centered organization that provides free vegan meals to the homeless and needy.
As Moskowitz got older she saw a subtle drift from the punk rock community of her youth, yet she was still steeped in the idealism of it. While watching the Food Network she pondered why there were no vegan cooking shows. Falling back to the do-it-yourself ethic of the punk rock scene, she decided that she would team up with co-host Terry Hope Romero, and a cooking show was born. The show used the title The Post Punk Kitchen to signify the feeling of being somewhat older and detached from the punk scene, yet still using what you learned from it to create something yourself. 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 aired on community access television in both Manhattan and Brooklyn from 2003 to 2005, and was made available on DVD.
The success of The Post Punk Kitchen led Moskowitz to the idea of compiling her many recipes into a cookbook. The process culminated with the late 2005 release of Vegan with a Vengeance. The cookbook was an immediate success and created a buzz within the vegetarian and vegan communities, garnering praise and steady sales. Vegan with a Vengeance contains recipes that, instead of relying on expensive and heavily processed meat substitutes, uses readily available ingredients that are inexpensive. The recipes run the gamut from tofu- and seitan-centered entrées, to soups and an extensive dessert section. The book also includes multiple references to the punk-rock subculture, and Moskowitz visibly sports a t-shirt from pioneering British anarcho-punk band Crass on the book's cover.
In 2006, Moskowitz teamed up with her co-host Terry Romero to create a cookbook consisting entirely of vegan cupcake recipes, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which was named Cookbook Of The Year by VegNews magazine. It also earned the duo considerable media attention, including a flattering write-up in The New York Times. 2007 saw the release of yet another book, Veganomicon, which bills itself as the "ultimate vegan cookbook." In 2009 two more books have been added to her repertoire, Vegan Brunch and Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. She also won two more VegNews "Veggie" awards, for Personality Of The Year and as the readers' choice for Favorite Cookbook Author. Herbivore magazine named her one of the New Faces of Veganism in the Winter 2005 issue, and featured her on the cover.
In April 2008, she relocated to Portland, Oregon from New York.
