My work here is done: The Jew and the Carrot are launched and my planet needs me. I leave you in the excessively capable hands of Leah, your new editrix in chieftess, now in the holy land.

In my last act, I give you my Great Aunt Lil’s homemade bagels. They come from Duluth, Minnesota - where the Jews are tall and above average. Not New York bagels; these are small and tough and chewy. Boiled and baked, these bagel put up a fight.  My Aunt Lil’s bagels are right, New York’s are wrong.

My long gone maiden aunt made a batch once a month, every month, for at least 90 years. I have never gotten them right and can never hope to make bagel that good. Though I try. And I consider it a most worthy goal.

Litvak Bagels, Duluth, Minnesota circa 1900

(yield 5 to 5 1/2 dozen - this recipe takes most of a day to complete)

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I picked up the program guide at the San Francisco JCC this afternoon, and enjoyed seeing something I’d never seen or heard of before: the JCC is hosting farmer’s markets before several holidays, including Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot!

For Shavuot, the catalogue reads:

“Celebrate Shavuot with organic produce from the JCCSF’s Farmers’ Market - a new holiday tradition at the JCCSF! Northern California farmers bring their bounty to the Pottruck Family Atrium to help you prepare for your family feast.”

I’m curious about who the farmer’s are, and the logistics of a “one-time” (or at least, irregular) market vs. a regular location from the vendors end. But I guess they’ve got it figured out. Short of hosting a CSA, which is a more permanent undertaking for JCCs, I think the idea of the farmer’s market, tied to special occasions (where you’re likely to be buying celebration food) is quite lovely. How wonderful!

I spent this afternoon wandering around Mahane Yehuda, the famous shuk (market) in Jerusalem. This indoor/outdoor market bursts with fruit and vegetable stands, bags of spices: rosehips, paprika, chili pepper, and curry…, baskets of roasted pecans, dried apricots, and dates, drippy buckets of herbed olives, cuts of meat hanging in refrigerated cases, and a few scattered bread and pastry stalls selling crusty breads and phyllo-wrapped treats. The stalls function a little like the kiddush table at shul, with grandmothers and youngsters elbowing each other out of the way to edge themselves closer to the best goods.

Israelis and tourists alike revere the shuk as a place to get “the freshest produce ever” (it seems that people speak in hyperbole about everything in Israel). A friend of mine who studied at Hebrew University recounts her weekly trips to the shuk where her lunch consisted of a seedless cucumber, a fresh, red tomato, and a hunk of bread. “That’s all I needed,” she wistfully recalled.

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You still have time to vote for The Jew and the Carrot as best new Jewish blog of 2007.

Polls for the first round close at 10pm EDT Sunday.

[jibawards.com]

Ready for another round of food updates from my trip to Israel?  I’m very aware at how *dull* it can be to listen to stories from someone else’s trip, but I promise these are keepers:

Wheat berries on Shabbat -One of the Shabbat dinner guests arrived with fresh wheat and proceeded to roast it, extract  the roasted wheat berries (by crushing the wheat stalk and rubbing it vigorously between his hands to release the berries), and “winnowing” it (separating the chaff from the grain) through a collandar.  “What better way to count the omer?” he asked as we sampled the nubby, slightly nutty-flavored wheat berries.  He countered himself, saying that barley would actually be preferable, because the wheat harvest isn’t supposed to happen until the end of counting the omer (Shavuot).  But we appreciated the effort.  (p.s. this is definitely a fun experiment to try at home!)

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The Whole Grains Council is sponsoring a campaign to get more people thinking about, looking for, and eating whole grains called “Just Ask for Whole Grains”. The buttons are beautiful, and they’ll send you one if you write to them and tell them what you plan to do with it!

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This morning I arrived in Israel via a red-eye flight for the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride.  It’s my first time visiting the country, which means everyone I mentioned my trip to gave me a lengthy list of things I absolutely ”must” do and see.  For the most part I’ve taken these suggestions with a grain of salt - I’m happy to be here, and not terribly anxious to see absolutely everything in this first trip.  But when it comes to food, I’m taking all the advice I can get.  Jcarrot Blogger, Phyllis Bieri, painted tales about the superbly fresh hummus, creamy labneh, and green falafel balls that are equal-parts fluffy, and crisp. 

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Every once in a while, I get this terrible alert in my inbox. The video goes up on youtube, the video is pulled down.

I debated not linking to it, or just linking to the wikipedia article instead, but decided in a free soceity I get to iterate just how stupid and wrong and hurtful the myth of the “kosher tax” is without being afraid to say so.

I’m naive, but it still surprises me to find anti-semitic hate speech about ketchup.

After hearing and reading all about locally grown organic food, I decided that I wanted to get my hands in the dirt. So this week, I helped out at the local CSA on a nearby farm. We transplanted onions, leeks and scallions. Two of us sat behind the tractor in little yellow plastic seats that are about a foot off the ground. Slanting down from the tractor is a metal sheet filled with trays of seedlings.

In-between and a little in front of the seats are three wheels with spikes on them. As the tractor moves forward, the wheels turn, digging small holes in the ground. The wheels are also filled with water, so as they dig, the holes are filled with water. As the tractor moved forward I had to pull out a seedling, from the tray, and shove it into the hole that was next to me. I then had to pinch the soil shut on top of the roots. This process had to be done in about 1 second in order to keep up with the tractor. Planting the three rows of seedlings took about an hour. The tractor had to stop a few times for me to catch up because it took me a while to get into a good rhythm. I believe we planted over five hundred onions.

Working at the CSA made me realize just how much work goes into making fresh, locally grown fruit. Everything there was grown by hand. I thought it was a great experience and I look forward to eating the onions.

Jewish food in America doesn’t have a high gastronomic reputation. Criticized for stringy meat and starchy, schmaltzy sides, the censure is to some degree well earned. The peasant food of Eastern European immigrants reflects the landscape and lives from which it came – the winters were long, the vegetables few, and meat was left on the hob from sundown to sundown.

Yet Jewish cuisine is fixed in the American dietary consciousness via the kosher delis of yore, despite a reputation for gummy brown food. You can find a bagel anywhere in America. (Price Chopper carries bacon and egg bagels.) Corned Beef and Pastrami are in every supermarket in Minnesota. Matzo balls have made their way to Hawaii.

In America’s Great Delis, author Sheryll Bellman provides a timeline for deli culture, starting at 6000 BC when hunter gatherers boil water, which she declares the birthday of borscht. (Borscht Belt humor, thankfully, has not made it too far past the Catskills.) In a book that is lovingly produced with archival photos and the occasional recipe, Bellman pays homage to the transmission of Jewish culture through deli food.

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Voting is still open for the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards. Barely five months old, The Jew and the Carrot is nominated for Best New Blog.

We’re falling behind and shamelessly beg your support to pull ahead. As they say in Chicago: vote early, vote often, vote from the grave.

(actually, JIBA will only let you vote once - but VOTE!)

[jibawards.com]

Any doubts that humane, healthy, organic and local are the dominant food trends? Witness today’s NYTimes dining:

• Prince Charles: Farmer, Cookie Maker, Ecologist and Yes, the Future King
• Foie Gras Makers struggle to Please Critics and Chefs
• When the Wine is Green: an exploration of biodynamic, natural and organic viticulture
• Locavores: Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally
  
• Wonder Bread backlash: Alex Witchel’s voice of benign and boring dissent
• A New Alliance in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity: Rachel Ray and Bill Clinton (!)

Assuming the dining section is one step behind the curve, reporting peaking trends rather than coming ones, what do you think will be next? Where will sustainability take our plates tomorrow?

[NYTimes]

(Posted on behalf of Rabbi Avi Feingold)

For anyone concerned about the wider impact of “Tzedek Kashrut” might want to consider what the wider implications of the word kosher and how the Halacha views it. Strictly defined, the word means fit, or legitimate and it has another fairly significant application in Halacha. A person is generally accepted as having a chezkat kashrut,  or the presumption of legitimacy. This applies when any question of that legitimacy arises. One would need to invalidate the presumption  of fitness in order to make the claim stick, much like the common law principle of being innocent until proven guilty. If the allegation proves to be true, one can be said to lose their chezkat kashrut, and any future allegations can and are coloured by this finding. So, for example if a restaurant is found to be serving unkosher food, even if the supervising agency felt that previously it was sufficient to have periodic inspections of the facility, a full time Mashgiach, might now be required.

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Food History has a cute (perhaps apocryphal) story about the first kosher butchers to arrive in Cairns, Australia.

The two shochetim willingly opened all their cases. The smallest case, flat as a briefcase, was filled with sharp blades polished and bright and dangerous. Big enough to kill a cow with one stroke and cause it no pain. Big enough and sharp enough to worry Customs. Customs called Security and the two Israelis were taken to a side room for further investigation.

The Australian who was supposed to interpret was unacountably detained and the Israelis didn’t have much English so they sat in the side room, trying to work out what to do.

“All we need,” said one to the other in Hebrew, “Are the English words for ‘Anachnu shochetim’ and they’ll understand the knives.”

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