25 pounds of unwashed root vegetables hit my kitchen last week like a mack truck. This was one of my two CSA’s winter shares, which the farmers offered for the first time this year to increase revenue with their surplus produce. I hate to pass up an opportunity for locally grown organic produce, so I signed up for both CSA’s winter shares.
I wasn’t prepared for the volume. The mud I kind of liked. It reminded me of my rural childhood, that smell of dirt and feeling the grit stream off the carrots, celery root, and potatoes as I washed, and re-washed them in the sink. But the sheer volume of vegetables placed a serious strain on my refrigerator, despite the ersatz “root cellar” I’ve constructed in our Manhattan apartment (my father loved crawl spaces and trap doors, so I tortured my contractor to provide something similar).
I am drowning in beets. The potatoes, carrots, celery root and onions were easy, and last shabbat dinner we had a “root vegetable” theme. But the beets…. Fortunately, I have always liked beets, as have my children, probably because I was raised on home grown beets. It doesn’t hurt that beets are one of the sweetest vegetables known, packing 8 g of sugar in a cup (sweeter than carrots or corn). They are teeming with vitamin A, folate, and fiber, along with lots of other good things.
I also didn’t realize that they are an old world vegetable, brought over here around Napoleon’s time. The Roman’s considered them an aphrodisiac, and they’re great for the colon.
But how to cook them? I did some recipe searches, and realized of course, Borscht. A fantastic soup, with a rich Ashkenazic heritage. I will try it next week. So far I have just done my regular beet preparations.
Boil or steam the heck out of the beets, till soft when pierced with a knife, usually 45 minutes, depending on how big the beet. Peel under running cold water. Cut up into small chunks. Toss with fresh-squeezed lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, and sea or kosher salt. The kids love this.
I also do Julia Child’s technique of grating the beets first in my food processor, then sauteeing in olive oil. I finish them the same, with lemon juice and salt, and a drizzle of olive oil. A bit messier, but with my new food processor totally fun.
Sometimes I forget to warn the babysitters that the kids had beets the night before. Most of us cannot metabolize the beet’s purple pigment betacyanin, and it can create a rather colorful toilet bowl.
The sweetness of beets can be offset with great salty flavors, like blue cheese or aged goat cheese, which a lot of chefs take advantage of. I found a recipe for beet nut bread, kind of like zucchini bread, but what about the color? I’m working up the nerve to try it.
Fortunately I have two weeks before the next winter share hits my kitchen.
This year, February 3rd is Tu B’Shevat, the holiday of the trees. What kind of a holiday is this Jewish Arbor Day?? Well, over the years it has been a…
- tax day for agrarian produce (according to Beit Hillel & Beit Shammai)
- a mystical symposium to the greatest reaches of the universe & beyond (courtesy of the Kabbalists in Sfat)
- a kibbutznik celebration of the land of Israel (circa early 20th century)
- and the Jewish equivalent to Earth Day (think: hippies, 1970s, environmentalism born).
Because there’s no halacha for Tu B’Shevat, it’s actually a holiday you can do whatever you want with– basic framework involves four worlds, four cups of wine, and talking about trees.
This year, I suggest that the latest incarnation of Tu B’Shvat, the “environmental holiday” where we talk about acid rain and deforestation, moves its focus just a little…to food. Trees, afterall, provide a lot of the food that we eat, and they grow in the dirt the same way all the rest of our food plants do. Food, in this case, connects us to all of the previous incarnations of Tu B’Shvat, as well as to the future: how we eat is one of our most profound interactions with the world, with the potential to connect us to Jewish history, the earth, each other, and to our deepest selves.
Hazon is going to be talking about food at our Tu B’Shvat Seder, Saturday, February 3rd, 7pm, at the JCC in Manhattan. The seder sells out ever year — if you’re in New York, don’t miss it! Cost is $20. Registration required: www.jccmanhattan.org or 646.505.5708. More more info contact Sabrina Malach: 212.644.2332 or sabrina[at]hazon.org. The JCC in Manhattan is located at 334 Amsterdam Ave. @ 76th St.
If you’re not in New York, I encourage you to hold or find your own Tu B’Shevat seder! You can find a lot about the holiday online: Wikipedia, Torah.org, Kolel, and Ritualwell.org all have great explanations and resources for putting together your own seder.
Chag sameach!
Here’s a thoughtful and well-written article by an Adamah-program alumni, Alexander Sharone, concerning his experience witnessing a goat being ethically slaughtered. The article was originally published Zeek’s January issue.
For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.
- Hosea 6:6
The act of milking is about as intimate as a fellow can get to a goat without suckling from the teat itself, a practice still taboo on the farm. Milking Angie – one of the resident goats on the organic farm at Adamah, a three month fellowship that integrates sustainable farming, Jewish learning, and spiritual practice at Isabella Freedman in Western Connecticut – requires more dexterity, coordination, and finesse than one might expect. Each fellow takes a turn at goat milking as part of daily chores, and I have been surprised by the development of a distinctive bulging hand muscle between my thumb and forefinger as a result of handling the moody temperament of this domesticated farm animal. The bulge marks much well-intentioned squeezing on cold winter mornings, icicles hanging from my own goatee as I empty Angie’s udders of sweet milk. And in truth, it pays to abstain from quaffing the raw milk directly from Angie herself, as the eventual self-expression of the bacteria within yields yogurt, farmer’s cheese, and chèvre – just a few of the staples we have learned to bring forth from the ever-flowing goat sap at our hands.
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Michael Pollan said it first, “supermarket pastoral” is ubiquitous — as reported in the NY Times and dubbed “greenwashing” by Kim Severson.
The kind of greenwashing I’m talking about is not just a fake environmental ethos. Greenwashing, it seems to me, can also describe a pervasive genre of food packaging designed to make sure that manufacturers grab their slice of the $25 billion that American shoppers spend each year on natural or organic food.
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In my last post, I waxed nostalgic for those iconic Jewish foods that seem to be fading away. To counter, here is “Sonnet on a Chocolate Egg Cream:” first published in the New York Times Metropolitan Diary. Enjoy:
Shall I drink thee on a summer’s day?
Thou art so bubbly and so chocolate.
Long spoons may mix thee every May
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too much the chocolate syrup pours
And often is the seltzer not much fizzed.
And every bubble from bubble sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature’s course, unsipped.
But thy eternal goodness shall not fall,
Nor lose possession of that taste thou ow’st,
Nor shall I hesitate to drink you in the shade
When in eternal lines to time my thirst grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
When my cousin Gladys’ mother died, her brother Getzel said to his sisters, “You will keep the house kosher, won’t you? Otherwise it wouldn’t be home.”
For the next 30 years, his three spinster sisters kept a minimum of six sets of dishes: everyday milk and meat, good milk and meat, peasdik milk and meat – and though no one would ever admit to it, I swear there was a secret glass set for trayf in the basement. For Getz, home meant kosher. And for us, her little cousins 25 years onwards, we can’t imagine the place any other way.
Gladys had a confession last weekend, when I was visiting for her 100th birthday.
“I’m not changing the dishes for Pesach,” she said conspiratorially.
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If New York City was a person, and you were lucky enough to be its best friend, it would be the kind of friend who planned elaborate surprise birthday parties for you and showed up unexpectedly at your house with a Tupperware container of freshly-baked muffins and a six-pack of Norwegian beer. Sadly, that is not the case. New York City still shows its love, however, in the amazing and seemingly endless ethnic and specialty food shops that sit gleaming on forgotten side streets, waiting to be discovered.
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Overall, my food preferences and likings are pretty simple. My family never had a cupboard with an array of various spices and seasonings – just the basics: salt, black pepper (which wasn’t used frequently since my family doesn’t like spicy food), garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cinnamon, and some interesting beef seasoning to be added to the weekly Shabbos cholent once in a while. This may be just a family thing, or a cultural trend, how Ashkenazic Jews don’t necessarily have an inspired pallet for an assortment of seasoning.
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It’s that season: the sniffling, fevered, afraid to touch the subway pole, other people’s cooties time of year. Common medical wisdom from Bubbe to your GP says that chicken soup, a quintessentially Jewish tonic, is the only known cure for the common cold.
The geniuses at Ask Yahoo name chicken soup’s many healing properties, among them the inhibition of inflamed nasal passage cells, and the promotion of mucous flow to soothe sore throats and coughs, all while trapping disease-causing bacteria. Yum!
Chicken soup is also said to contain an amino acid similar to those in drugs used to treat respiratory infections.
Is also good for the soul, we hear.
On a recent trip to Montreal, my boyfriend and I visited a vegan restaurant we discovered through a quick Google search. (I’m a vegetarian and wary of mediocre kosher restaurant fare. He keeps kosher but will eat in vegetarian and vegan restaurants. This was a good compromise – in theory).
Our bohemian server, who was also the restaurant’s chef and owner, let us know that aside from using no animal byproducts, the restaurant had another strict policy: guests are required to eat everything on their plates. Meaning, everything (leftover sauce on the plate included).
When we cheerfully assured him we weren’t “typical wasteful New Yorkers,” he launched into a fervent and mostly incoherent diatribe about food waste, the Iraq War, and America’s Puritanical intolerance. The food he eventually served was remarkable – an amazing tangle of flavors and textures. But we ate our meal in uncomfortable shock and left with a sour taste in our mouths.
The experience left me wondering: How much does the revolution belong at the dinner table?
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No, jcarrot didn’t make the list — not this year at least! But a lot of pretty great blogs did, including a few of our favorites: Ethicurean (Groups), US Food Policy (Food Industry), Slashfood (Groups), Vegan Lunchbox (Family/Kids), and Orangette (a few dift, categories, including Overall) .
So if you’re looking for more food blogs to while away your hours and help you plan what to have for dinner, check it out: Well Fed Network. You can vote for your favorite until January 9th.
Just got back from the annual New Year’s Contact Improvisation Jam at Earthdance, an ecologically focused, intentional community for (transient) resident dancers that I’ve been visiting for a dozen years or so.The food is great - lots of root vegetables, leafy greens, hearty soups, and other healthy wintery fare - with much of the food coming from the organic Earthdance garden. Add a hot tub, sauna, and about 125 wooded acres with a cold, deep quarry for swimming, and of course lots of yummy people, for full effect.
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(xposted by Lenny on jspot.org)
Related to thoughts about fruit platters, wedding foods, and such, jspot.org recently highlighted a program in Washington DC called Ethical Smahot.
Ethical Smahot is a project initiated by Rabbi Alana Suskin and Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg as an attempt to control the excesses of some Jewish lifecycle celebrations and infuse them with an ethical, meaningful spirit. The project took inspiration from an earlier statement by some Orthodox rabbis in New York City regarding the necessity to control conspicuous consumption during lifecycle celebrations.
In its current incarnation, Ethical Smachot centers on a statement of seven principled elements that should be reflected in every Jewish lifecycle celebration: Tzniut (modesty), Kavod HaBriot (respect for one’s fellow human beings), Talmud Torah (study and learning), Seudah (festive meal), Tzedakah (charity), Tzedek (righteousness and justice), and Shomrei Adamah (guarding the Earth).
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