Never am I happier to see the back end of a holiday, never readier to assimilate forever, than when Passover passes over. I feel like 40 years in the desert were just performed in real time.
My girlfriends and I celebrate Passover’s passing with pizza and beer. When the chag is over, we return to chometz, and to the world, together. But like many traditions, it bears the burden of memory: where were we last year at this time? How many broken hearts have we nursed each other through since? How many happily ever afters? (not enough, thank you very much) Life landmarks?
The tally for the past year of dating my girlfriends:
1 rabbinical school matriculation
4 break-ups
2 apartments purchased
1 book written
various siblings were engaged, married, or reproduced
As they say, next year…
Idea and image courtesy of flickr user Rodrigo Piwonka.
Jews have always been good at “repurposing” - pagan agricultural festivals, indigenous artforms, or the latest technology are all fodder for making our Jewish lives richer, more varied, or, well, simply more portable.
(Note: Even “Food-safe” plastics raise multiple health issues. You probably wouldn’t want to make a habit out of carting your lunch around in a container that you got of the shelf at Staples. Still, an entertaining idea nonetheless).
If you haven’t found a screening of King Corn, another amazing recent film, Black Gold, about the efforts of Tadesse Meskela and Ethiopian coffee farmers to increase the market for Fair Trade Ethiopian coffee varieties, will be airing on PBS Wednesday evening (times vary by station). If you want to continue remembering and learning about struggles for freedom after Passover ends– there are a number of actions we can take as consumers and responsible citizens with info atBlack Gold and Oxfam’s websites.
The goal of these films should not be to stress you out further about which products to consume….or should it?
Salon.com reports that a ruling by the USDA might make it significantly more difficult (and costly) for coffee farmers to grow certified organic coffee and cocoa. Some farmers might continue to grow sustainably and simply forego certification, but in a market where consumers look for the organic seal as a sign of authenticity on their Starbucks Coffee bags and Dagoba chocolate bars, the ruling could pose a threat to their livelihood.
Read the full article here.
We remember! We remember!
(We also recommend adding a little more wine to this recipe, for optimal construction qualities).
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In a recent post, I mentioned a homemade granola recipe that I found on Aviva Allen’s website. She recently published a kosher organic cookbook with simple yet delicious recipes. She personally invented all of the recipes, and are made with wholesome, organic foods and grains. Something that is very useful which she added are little icons next to each recipe indicating if it is a vegan, gluten free, or passover friendly recipe. After Pesach, I plan on doing a full review of this cookbook, but in the meantime here is a sweet potato kugel that I made last night which is very good.
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The evil mad scientists at evilmadscientist.com created a faux tiramasu recipe for Passover, called Tiramatzah. They swear that matzah + coffee + mascarpone = “without doubt, the best tiramasu I’ve ever made.”
Will some brave soul please make this before Passover ends, and let us know how it tastes?
If the Conservative movement is serious about the tzedek “justice” hechsher, it might also consider including kosher certified foods that have a low carbon footprint or that proactively offset their greenhouse gas liability. The Chicago Tribune takes a look at how China, lynchpin of the global marketplace, is working kashrut into its manufacturing processes:
China’s seven masgiachs are exhausted. Factory owners don’t understand kosher (“I have to tell them, ‘There’s no way to make a pork dim sum kosher,” said Rabbi Amos Benjamin, a Shanghai-based Star-K inspector.) And there’s confusion as to what a rabbi is, as workers wait patiently for the “rabbit” to arrive.
The article betrays just how many food miles are in your kosher convenience foods, “Shipments of frozen fish from Alaska and Greenland come all the way to China for processing and kosher inspection, only to be reshipped to the U.S. for sale.”
As the crow flies, it’s about 6,000 miles from Greenland to the factory districts of China. It’s another 8,000 miles from China to New York City. Your hecshered frozen fish owes a fair-sized debt to the planet.
[Chicago Tribune]
We talk about Passover being about freedom. Not only freedom _from_ oppression, from slavery, from want, but also freedom _to_ limit ourselves, to make choices, to live by a set of ethics and morals as set out by the Torah on Shavuout, or just in general — as free people we have privilege and also responsibility.
But damned if that privilege doesn’t drive us crazy sometimes. I enjoyed this article by Sara Deseran called Feast of Burden, which talks about the challenges of wild vs. farmed lox, the ten minute agonizing over the freezer case at your grocery store, the guilt that comes when your head knows but your stomach still craves.
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This Pesach, rather than waxing philosophical about what narrow places I’ve been hiding out in lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about food. Specifically, why is it that when it comes to Jewish food, Sephardic cuisine beats Ashkenazi cuisine almost every time.
Don’t get me wrong. I am 100 percent Ashkenazi. Before I became a vegetarian, I was raised on a steady diet of my grandmother’s kreplach, chopped liver, and stuffed cabbage. I still love a good matzah ball, and that goes for gefilte fish as well (my vegetarianism includes fish).
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The seders may be over, but the quest to make the perfect Matzah ball (or potato kugel, chicken soup, or gefilte fish) can last all Pesach. Real Meals TV features short cooking spots that demonstrate how to make authentic Pesach recipes, complete with tips and secrets (e.g. use seltzer in your matzah balls) to make your holiday delicious, even after the seder. Find the video shorts here.
I just got back from presenting at 4 area conferences for the NY State School Nutrition Association. This is a professional organization that helps support and educate cafeteria workers. This year’s theme was Farm to School Programs. Getting more local fruits, grains, and vegetables into the schools makes sense for children’s health, local economies, school budgets, and the preservation of farmlands. Other presenters included local farmers, and folks from the NYS Farm Bureau. Promoting local agriculture and economies was something that everyone there agreed with, and there was a lot of useful information presented by some very passionate and well-informed people. I felt welcomed, even with my more ‘radical’ viewpoints, and was given a good forum to present my ideas, as well as my songs - I really enjoyed myself.
On the other hand, I am constantly surprised to be reminded that most of the attendees, which included cafeteria managers as well as staff, had little knowledge of nutrition beyond the basic USDA requirements.
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The final three hours of Pesach preparations are approaching… and I actually have some down time now to blog! I am happy to say that it’s been a group effort amongst my family members to get to this point in time. Between the shopping, shlepping boxes from our basement with Pesach dishes upstairs to our kitchen, preparing our kitchen, to cooking, and to preparing all the necessary items for the Seders, I feel lucky to have time now to post about my cooking preparations.
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