I’m still fired up from the Food Conference, with a million thoughts about the steps we should be taking as individuals, as a Jewish community, and as a nation to bring about a more sustainable food system and environmental renewal. The Shmita Project sessions at Asilomar were the first steps in a 7 year plan to change the Jewish communal discussion about food, farming, and a Jewishly-informed Farm Bill, and we’ll be reporting on them soon. Thank you to everyone who attended.
In today’s fast-paced world, with the emphasis on immediate, tangible results, even a 7 year plan can seem like a long time. As we’ve written about before, the shmita ideally meant that you had to relinquish your focus on the immediate to keep an eye on the long-term concerns of every member of your society, especially the less fortunate. In addition to the Shmita, the Torah has laws for theYovel, the 50-year Jubilee cycle, which also worked to prevent entrenched poverty (the modern Jubilee Movement has focused on debt relief to developing countries). Can we as a Jewish community think 50 years ahead on issues of food sustainability and environmentalism? What would that project look like?
Last week the New Yorker published a longish piece (registration required) about Orthodox rabbis who criss-cross China certifying that various food manufacturing companies are adhering by all the rules of kashrut. It’s a fascinating little piece about what it really means to be a mashgiach, or a person who checks that food is kosher. Here’s a part that caught my eye:
How does the process of kosher certification inspection work? Here’s a composite scenario, as I witnessed it. The Schmooze: This takes place in the conference room, which is perhaps adorned with a wood-and-brass captain’s wheel from a ship. On the wall, there might be a framed certificate for “High Tech Enterprise 2006″ or a large painted sign with an adage in English. “Only Faulty Product, No Captious Customer” and “People and Products Working Together” were two that I saw. Among those in attendance could be a plant supervisor, an engineer, an export manager, a sales representative, and a factory-hired translator. There is always a lot of chuckling–about what, I don’t think anyone present ever has a clue. Finally, the mashgiach turns on his laptop, signaling that it is time for… The Review of the Raw Materials… More
(Emphasis mine.)
What struck me is this whole issue of everyone laughing for no reason, a point that is picked up again later in the article. To me, that’s a little microcosm of everything that’s going on in the kashrut industry. Everyone is smiling and chuckling and looking jolly and pious, but no one really knows what’s happening.
A product gets an OU on it when the company that makes it pays a significant amount of money to have a rabbi (like the ones in this article), come and inspect the facilities that produce the food. That means that the only person who really knows what goes into our food is these mashgichim. But we all sit around patting each other and ourselves on the back for being so pious, even though the food we eat has been produced and processed thousands of miles away. We’re paying someone else to be responsible for us.
This is not a bad idea in principal, but I think it has led too many of us in the Jewish community to assume that there’s something safer or better about kosher, or even that certified kosher food really is kosher. It might not be.
Bottom line: we are all responsible for being our own mashgichim. We need to be way more aware of where our food is coming from and what goes in it. From a kashrut perspective, but also from a health and ecological perspective. When it’s time to check if something is legit or not, we shouldn’t be grinning like fools–we should get down to business.
Not everyone suffers from this problem, but I personally have leftover holiday candy. Mine is a half bag of Sunspire chocolate drops, which I bought as dreidel game “gelt.” It turns out you don’t need an entire 10-ounce bag of M&M wannabes to play a good game of dreidel, and being one of the only women on the planet who does not require frequent intake of chocolate (some kind of hormonal imbalance, I’m sure), I had these things sitting around for the past two weeks.
I did notice them sitting there and I did think about snacking on them. Somehow, though, I couldn’t get into the idea of crunching down on the sugary candy shells and the room temperature chocolate inside.
Many of you were able to take home your very own copies of the Hazon Cookbook at the Food Conference. For those of you who were not able to join us, we share this compilation of favorite recipes from participants of the Food Conference, December 25-28, 2008 / 28 Kislev- 1 Tevet, 5769. A special thank you to Eli Margulies for putting this together.
We received amazing submissions, many of which are featured here. Click on the below link to download a copy of the cookbook. You will notice that each recipe reads quite differently – we have left them in the original form, as submitted. Additionally, they have not been tested by anyone at Hazon. We hope that these recipes give you a taste of the Food Conference and that they will provide you with joy, nourishment, and time around the table with loved ones.
B’tai Avon (a good appetite)!
2008 Food Conference Executive Committee
And if you’re looking for *more* cookbook fun - check out The Jew & The Carrot’s Tastebook! It features the best recipes, stories, and photos from the last two years on the blog, and $10 of every book sale goes to Hazon. Click here to purchase.
The day before the Hazon Food Conference, I learned how to eviscerate a turkey in less than 10 minutes.
On the day, I was mostly aware of how elated I was at having learned this new skill. It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, but under the careful tutelage of farmer Jim, I really felt that I got it.
Since then, I’ve had the chance to reflect on the larger significance of the day. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who say “Eww, gross!” I’ve read Sue Fishkoff’s great JTA piece on the event, and the rude comments left in response. And in the quiet of the winter after the excitement of the Food Conference has calmed a bit, I have the time to offer some of my thoughts on the subject (other than my glee at my new poultry-gutting skills!)
Rabbi Rebecca Joseph is a conservative rabbi, a cultural anthropologist, and a Tuv Ha’Aretz member! Her blog, The Parve Baker is filled with delicious recipes and (equally delicious) words of Torah.
Like a lot of other people at Hazon’s third annual food conference, I found myself shopping at the Farmers’ Market on Sunday morning. I hadn’t really planned to do this, but when someone asked me to meet there – I can’t even remember for what – I had difficulty resisting the urge to pick up a few things. Alright, quite a few things. Chocolate, coffee, maple syrup, red cabbages, onions, garlic, kiwis, and Granny Smith apples. All organic and sold by or fairly sourced directly from the producers. In other words, perfectly virtuous foods.
Then there were the cookies. When I picked up two bags of faux-cream filled chocolate sandwiches at the table of overstock from the conference kitchen, the volunteer on the other side glanced over at me suspiciously. I explained that I’m a baker and would use them for pie crust sometime soon. That didn’t lead to further conversation, so I placed my donation in the honor box and moved on.
Wow,
The conference was something incredible. I feel so blessed to be a part of this growing community and movement, and I thank those of you who joined us at Asilomar and contributed in a myriad ways to the 3rd annual Food conference. I truly look forward to witness how we all take the next steps forward, through personal choices, communal activity, public policy outreach, the development of new educational opportunities, and ….
At the conference, I was given the honor of sharing my vision for the New Jewish Food Movement, and I thought I would also share it here. So, I have shared those words below. I hope you might get some inspiration from my vision, but more importantly, I hope you will be inspired to think of how your vision fits into Hazon’s work, and even share your vision here on JCarrot.
Ever wondered what could be more local than locally grown? Blogger, writer for The Forward and The Jew & The Carrot guest contributor, Aaron Kagan, set out to find out - and came up with two Jewish urban foragers who scout out wild edibles. Read the article (originally published in The Forward) below, and find a great related recipe over at their site.
For folks who do not get The Jewish Week in New York, I wanted to share this cute article that was written about me and Hazon. It also gives a bit of insight into the ever-emerging new Jewish food movement. I’m a bit afraid/embarrassed that my obsession over not serving strawberries at my November wedding might seem weird to some people - but I know readers of this blog will understand!
She is What She Eats
By: Randi Sherman
12/17/08
At Leah Koenig’s wedding last month, the details had to be just right. The groom, musician Yoshie Fruchter, understandably insisted the music be good, easy enough. And Koenig wanted the menu to be good, a more difficult task considering her strict stipulations.
“I couldn’t find a caterer who could make food kosher enough for me, my husband and our guests, and who cared about the food being organic and seasonal,” said Koenig. One caterer who fit the criteria couldn’t handle the size of the party. The caterer for the JCC in Manhattan, who Koenig was excited to work with, suggested strawberry shortcake, but the berries were out of season and wouldn’t be locally grown.
To get the caterers to work with her, Koenig suggested apple crisp with vanilla ice cream instead. Anna Stevenson, a friend and former colleague, provided butternut squash, beets and potatoes for the meal from the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut. Guests, some dressed as carrots and peas to honor Koenig’s tradition of sometimes dressing up in carrot costume for coworkers’ weddings, praised the food served at the meal. Koenig calls it her “crowning glory.”
While a fruit’s seasonality might not be a factor for most brides, to 26-year-old Koenig, serving strawberries in mid-to-late fall is nearly sacrilege.
The Hazon Food Conference ended yesterday. I did not cover any sessions for the blog, since I was too busy with my duties as a member of the executive committee, but the fact that the turkey schechting made front page news locally was a pretty big deal. Said article was even above the fold. While my good friend Roger Studley deserves full credit for making this happen, the fact that the schechting took place because of the conference was hardly mentioned. It would have been nice if a bit more about the conference would have made it into the article, but still — it’s interesting that this was deemed front-page worthy, without a photo, even. As the volunteer member of the executive committee who planned the food for the conference, I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say in the coming days, but today I took a much-needed day of R&R. I will say though that it was an incredible four days. I’m both exhilirated and exhausted.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be posting full video of some of the key note addresses and panels at the Hazon Food Conference. Until then, enjoy another demonstration from raw foodist Alexander Sharone. Below, he demonstrates making nut milk from brazil nuts, but this recipe will work with any nut. Be sure to soak the nut over-night (4-6 hours for cashews) in order to start the sprouting process. This begins digesting proteins in the nut, breaking them down to their amino acid components and making those amino acids more available to your stomach. After you’ve soaked the nuts, rinse them and keep them in a jar in the fridge to slow the sprouting. Alex blends his with a three-horse power blender, which is powerful enough to grind the soluble fiber right out of an avocado pit, but you can make nut milk with a regular blender. Here’s Alex grinding up and “milking” those Brazil nuts:
Open up your kitchen cupboard, grab a handful of common herbs, fruits and vegetables and voila, your own unregulated pharmacy. On Friday, Tamar Lieb shared her knowledge of the medicinal uses of common plants in the workshop “Kitchen Wisdom for Common Ailments.” To use herbs as medicine, you can do everything from eating them to dissolving them in water, honey, sugar, or oil to extract beneficial properties from fresh and raw plants. I’ve included her long list of beneficial herbs and their properties here (it’s even alphabetized!)
To use waters for your herbal preparation, you can make an infusion (pouring boiling water over delicate things like flowers or leaves) a decoction (boiling harder things like bark or certain dried roots), or use steam. The smell of a plant is its volatile oils escaping, so when you’re making tea, Lieb suggested, keep it covered while it steeps. In a steam bath, made by pouring boiling water over your more delicate herbs (think the pizza spices - oregano, rosemary, basil, thyme - for a cold) and then placing your face, under a towel and over the bowl while you breath in the oily, aromatic steam.
Late on Shabbat afternoon, a few entrepreneurial conference participants listened to some words of wisdom from Noah Alper who, until he sold his kosher bagel shops in 1996, had been the largest kosher retailer in the United States. Beginning in the late 1980’s, Noah’s Bagels had helped take what had once been an ethnic specialty – bagels – and make them the normative cuisine in areas of the country that had rarely seen any Jews.
But even from the start of his career, Noah was used to blazing trails. He shared a story of when he was one of six entrepreneurs waiting early one cold January morning at the Logan airport cargo pick-up. Those entrepreneurs had pooled their resources to have fresh organic vegetables shipped in from California. Although today organic produce is widely available, in 1973, when he co-founded the natural foods grocery store Bread and Circus, there were only a handful of stores in the Boston area that sold organic and fresh.
After entering the relaxing and invigorating space that is Asilomar yesterday afternoon, I attended my very first workshop at my very first Hazon Food Conference, a fabulous new documentary about the current state of organic agriculture in Israel and its history, presented by Isaac Hametz and Sasha Perry, who created the film.
This fantastic film began with the “father” of organics in Israel, Mario Levy, and his concerns about the health effects of DDT-like chemicals on communities living near farms in the north of Israel. Levy went on to found the Israel Bio-organic Agriculture Association, which now has 400 members. Although the organic movement in Israel is still fledgling, with fewer than 10 CSAs, it is growing in popularity and in July, Israel past its first organic law.
For folks who do not get 
