[Warning: although this post is about the topic at hand, it takes a little longer than usual to get there…]
I don’t know how I became such an Indophile, all I know it is that it happened. It probably was around the time I returned from my first trip to India, and realized how dull everything looked. I missed the women wearing magenta and gold, or turquoise and orange, not to mention the jewels between their eyebrows. It seemed like I had been wearing Technicolor-colored glasses, and then all of a sudden, everyone around me had faded into shades of grey, brown and black.
My love of all things Indian caused me to seek out an Indian-style wedding dress, and get henna on my hands and feet for my wedding day. The fact that Paulie, my husband, chose to wear an Indian suit as well meant that the studio that printed my wedding album called my photographer just out of curiosity to ask her whether ours was a Hindu or Jewish wedding.

I mention all of this because last week, I had a cooking date with Swati, the amazingly talented woman who designed my wedding dress www.swati.us/wedding3.html. (The peach one at the bottom of this web page is my actual dress, if anyone cares about such silly things)…She lives in the South Bay, about an hour from me, and like so many wonderful things in my life, I found her online (I met my husband online, too). She designs the gowns from her home here, and then has a team of people embroidering and sewing to her specifications in Bombay. I know, I know, I hardly went local for a wedding dress.

Read more »

The Worldwatch Institute recently released a video short called Eat Here: A haven for food safety fighters to Slow Foodies.

Despite the title, it offers a solid, pithy introduction to the benefits of local food (focusing on increased safety, better taste, supporting farmers, stopping suburban sprawl, and supporting the local economy) - in an easy-to-forward format.  If you’re trying to convince your cousin Josh to go local, this is a good place to start.

Demanding a law that favors eaters over agribusiness, Michael Pollan sounds the tom toms on the next five years of food policy in the US and around the world. Call your senators before your children catch obesity.

In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer’s markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can’t, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.

[NYTimes]

New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposes the congestion tax.

“Like with the smoking ban,” he said, “we did it, and whole countries followed us.”

We heart him.

Voting is now OPEN for the Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards!

The Jew and the Carrot has been nominated for two categories:

Best New Blog - and -

Best Kosher Food/Recipe Blog

Show your support to Jewish foodies everywhere and vote today (the first round of voting closes April 29).

www.jibawards.com

Are the people who serve your fries getting sick leave? Does your barista get paid for overtime? Are the dishwashers getting paid minimum wage?

The folks at Bema’agalei Tzedek are working to make sure that everyone entering a public eatery in Israel can answer these questions. Their social seal program, which is active in five Israeli cities, takes the idea of fair trade one step further, assesses the whether or not a restaurant or catering hall is living up to its social responsibilities towards it employees and patrons. The social seal sticker makes it easy for customers to do a quick ethical check before they scan the menu. Read more »

My last omer-centric post celebrated the yeastiness of a sourdough starter. Today I wanted to focus on barley. Let’s not forget that the omer period itself is named after the measure of barley, known as an “omer” that was brought to the Temple on the second day of Pesach, marking the beginning of the transition from the barley harvest of early spring to the later wheat harvest of Shavuot.

Hmmm…yeast, barley….what else might be used to celebrate this period? Some commentators say that the transition from barley to wheat marks the transition of the Israelites from a slave people (who lived like animals, the main consumers of barley) to freedom (since wheat bread marked the culmination of civilization). Not so fast, says professor Charlie Bamfourth in a recent Scientific American article: Read more »

The Jewish Reconstructionist Federation is focusing their “omer education” this year on Sustainability (who isn’t focusing on sustainability these days?)

Their most recent omer teaching focuses on fair trade coffee and the mitzvah of Kan Tzipor, which is based on the text below:

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. Deuteronomy Ki Tetzei 22:6-7

If eating seasonally generally makes me feel somewhat closer to nature, I’m not quite sure what to make of the Israeli phenomenon of seasonal yogurts. In late August, when we arrived for the year, just ahead of the High Holidays, I saw an ad for pomegranate flavored yogurt. I was excited to try it but didn’t get around to looking for it for a few weeks and when I did it wasn’t there. I assumed it was just another one of those things that one needs to be ‘really’ Israeli to be able to find in the supermarket. I settled for strawberry, mango, and chocolate sponge cake flavors instead.

But a few more weeks passed and the chocolate sponge cake was gone.I was sad but grabbed some apple pie and some citrus mix which I was mostly sure I had not seen before. (again I was not sure how much was my lack of supermarket skills and how much was reality!) Upon inspection, I noticed to the bright yellow sticker on the side which announced that these flavors were “New! Temporary!” It finally dawned on me that like the fruits and vegetables, yogurts in Israel are seasonal.

Read more »

The Jew and the Carrot was nominated for Best New Blog and Best Kosher Food/Recipe Blog for the Jewish and Israel Blog Awards!  (Our blog friend, Gluten Free By the Bay, was also nominated in the latter category.) 

Jcarrot was launched in December, and is already being recognized as one of the best Jewish blogs out there! 

Voting opens April 22nd, and is open for one week - please show your support by voting for Jcarrot at http://www.jibawards.com/

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, sets out to answer the seemingly simple question, “What should we have for dinner?” Pollan traces four meals to their origins: a meal from McDonalds, a meal cooked from ingredients bought at Whole Foods, a meal from a small local farm, and one that was made hunter-gatherer style. Pollan discusses the taste of the meal and the environmental impact of each meal. As you can imagine, the meal from McDonalds was the worst meal both environmentally and taste-wise. It is also the only meal that one can eat while driving on the highway. The meal from Whole Foods was good flavor-wise. The milk at Whole Foods is organic, meaning the corn the milk cows are fed is organic. It does not mean that they are treated humanely. The free-range chickens are not allowed outside until they are ready to be killed. The local meal was all grown on a small local farm, was completely free-range, and all grass fed. The fourth meal was all made with food either hunted, foraged, or grown by Pollan. He goes hunting for wild boar, tries to forage for abalone, forages for mushrooms, and grows lettuce from his garden in Northern California. This meal was the best of the four; he described it as “the perfect meal.”

As I thought about this book, I realized that a kosher omnivore living in New England would have a very hard time preparing a meal hunter-gatherer style.

Read more »

For its 10th Anniversary gourmet fundraiser, the JCC of Washington DC has changed its kosher policy to “kosher-style”, angering observant supporters, the Washington Jewish Week reports.

The chief reasons cited by representatives of local Jewish organizations for serving kosher-optional fare are that kosher meals are relatively costly and not particularly popular among attendees a combination that can reduce the net proceeds of fund-raisers. (Only 7.2 percent of local Jews eat strictly kosher food both in and outside of the home, according to the 2003 Greater Washington Jewish community survey.)

“Kosher meals appreciably add to the expense involved, but they do not appreciably add to the number of supporters who will come,” said Marilyn Feldman, a spokesperson for the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington.

[Washington Jewish Week]

There are many food-related things one can count while counting the omer– food miles, money spent on food each day/week….what else can folks think of?

Next week, Eat Local Challenge and the Locavores are sponsoring a Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, from April 23 to 29. Many people are under the impression that eating local (like organic), requires a large food budget. The point of the Penny-Wise challenge is to eat local, as defined by a 100-mile radius, on what some consider a small budget.

The Penny-Wise challenge uses numbers from the Department of Labor’s Consumer Expenditures, which allots $68/week for a one-person household or $144/week for a household of 2+ with 2 wage earners.

Read more »

(image and recipe below via deliciousdays.com)

Growing up in the late 70’s and early 80’s, my mom often participated in the gastronomic equivalent of a chain letter: a sourdough “Amish friendship bread” called Hermann. A friend or neighbor would give us a cup of this mysterious goo, which my sister or I would lovingly “feed” a cup of milk, flour, and 1/2 cup of sugar every fifth day, stirring on the days in between (yes, other kids had dogs or cats, we had a sourdough starter that lived in the fridge. This might explain some of my food issues as an adult…). Every now and then, we’d give some Hermann away to friends with care and feeding instructions, or use a few cups of Hermann to bake a delicious coffee cake.

Hermann is the perfect post-Pesach pet. You count the days between feedings as you count the Omer, and revel in the sheer yeastiness of the experience, and the resultant baked goods. Plus, you get to share him with friends, and as you give him away, Hermann’s value only increases (much like the Torah we receive anew from Sinai each Shavuot…).

Here’s instructions for starting your own Hermann, and a great recipe for a Hermann coffee cake is after the jump. Happy feeding! Read more »