I am sitting in the Nagycsarnok — the Great Market — in Budapest, thinking: I’m only here for 4 days, there’s no way I can possibly eat my way through this country! Only four days, and one of them Yom Kippur.

This food is the Hungarian countryside, only edible. Cucumbers. Celery. Leeks. Melons. Yellow beans. Carrots and parsnips and piles and piles of peppers — pale green ones and bright red ones that look like crumpled wads of newspaper. While the amount of global food in Budapest is a little sobering (Burger King, pizza places, gyros and felafel and Chinese fast food), there are still a lot of foods I’ve never seen before, and that makes me feel I’m in a new place.

Such as bags of cheese — turned out to be a sort of dry cottage cheese. And a biscuit-type thing with cheese and pumpkin seeds. And (baruch hashem!) all the “meggy” treats — sour cherry turnover, strudel with sour cherries and poppyseeds….

What does it mean, to eat my way through a country? And what does that mean for Yom Kippur, a day of not eating?

Read more »

Sukkot is coming up next week. As a self-described natural Jew, I love this harvest holiday. I love decorating a sukkah with gourds and juicy apples (or in the case of my friend Julie’s sukkah two years ago, Jackson Pollack-style splash paint). I love that it’s a time of year when Jews unabashedly sniff citrus fruit and beat palm fronds on the ground. I love that we pray for rain.

It’s also a time of year when I start to think about gleaning - which, as a non-farmer I admit feels a little weird, but actually couldn’t be more relevant. As we learn from Ruth’s story (which is read on another Jewish harvest holiday, Shavuot), the Jewish mitzvah of pe’ah commands that farmers leave the corners of their field to the poor.

Read more »

Despite the exciting abundance available at farmers’ markets all summer, it’s not until the concord grapes arrive in early fall that the true celebration of the New England harvest begins.  Tonight, as I enjoyed my first bunch of the season’s juicy, purple slip-skin bounty, I began to investigate their unique place in my local and cultural foodshed. Love them or hate them, concord grapes are a symbol of New England history and harvest, having been developed in Concord, MA in 1849.

In 1853, the grapes won first place in the Boston Horticultural Society Exhibition, and according to The Forward, that history is tied up with the history of their founder, Ephraim Wales Bull, a nativist and potential anti-semite. Before their use in Kosher wine was adopted by New York’s Sam Schapiro, explains the article, the grapes were championed by Bull as being native-American and superior to their “too tender Syrian brothers,” a potential reference to the Semitic immigrants Bull would have resented as a Nativist. Although we may never know the intention of Bull’s comments, we can savor the fruits of his labor, via wine or straight from the vine.

Thanks to The Jew & The Carrot friend, Robbie Friedman, for this guest post.

Rectangular pizza, sloppy joes and canned corn — classic components of a school lunch. Many of our schools still spoon out such unwholesome foods, yet a growing number of them are turning the greasy corner.

Since New England born physicist Benjamin Thompson founded the Poor People’s Institute in Munich, Germany in the late 1700’s, providing daily staples such as potato soup, barley and peas to children during the course of their studies, our social institutions have constantly “sought to develop meals which would provide the best nutrition at the lowest possible cost.”

This approach has undoubtedly fed countless mouths, but it has also led to the deterioration of food quality. Today the struggle to nourish our children persists, due in part to school systems’ ailing budgets, parents pressed for time and our own lack of nutritional knowledge. However, a failure to deliver a wholesome source of vitamins, minerals, proteins and healthy fats to our children’s plates is a detriment to their development. People, including Jews, are beginning to take the matter into their own soiled hands.

Read more »

So.  I’m in week one of kitchen tshuvah - my attempt to “return to my best self” through some serious reflection and reordering of my kitchen and all it symbolizes: family, overeating/under-eating, connection to the land, caring for others, care of myself, building community…

It’s all a bit daunting, especially since I haven’t spent more than 10 minutes in my kitchen for almost a week.  But with the Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat lineup (prayer, food, sleep, food, prayer, more food, a little more sleep and leftovers to bring home) finally over, I actually feel free to spend time reassessing my culinary situation. 

Glancing into my fridge this morning, I noticed a crisper of neglected (but remarkably still fresh) CSA vegetables and not much else….unless you count the nearly empty milk container and murky condiment jars.  So, I dusted off my granny cart and headed for the Park Slope Food Coop. 

I know - so I went shopping, big deal, right?  But I felt giddy strolling down the aisles - bagging bulk pasta, grinding coffee grounds and stocking up on bread, beans, and cheese.  My kitchen would have life again!  It would have potential and I, for a change, would feel settled there instead of bewildered and hungry.  I started dreaming up meals I could make for friends, reconnecting not only to my cutting boards, but to the people I love.

See below for more and a recipe for plum and nectarine cobbler…

Read more »

With the sweet memory of Rosh Hashanah (round challah, noodle kugel, baked apples, pomegranates…) behind us, The Jew & The Carrot is moving ahead - towards Yom Kippur and a decidedly different approach to “holiday eating.”

Before we bid Rosh Hashanah adieu, here is one more memory of New Year’s eatin’ - this time it’s an unusual take on a Rosh Hashanah menu from our friends at Heeb n’ Vegan

Round Challah, Apples with Agave Nectar, and…Charoset?!

Michael Croland

Trivia: Which Jewish holiday features round challah, apples with agave nectar, potato latkes, soofganiyot, charoset, karpas with salt-water, Israeli salad, hummus, kasha varnishkes, Manischewitz wine, Dr. Brown’s soda, and grape juice? Rosh Hashanah heebnvegan-style, of course!

There’s no reason why most traditional Jewish foods can’t be made vegan (and still be delicious). That was the thinking behind the Vegan Jewish-Foods Mega-Potluck that I organized last year, and last week’s sequel set a new standard for Jewtasticness. Thanks to resources like JewishVeg.com’s recipes page, it’s quite easy for even mediocre cooks to whip up traditional Jewish foods that are 100% vegan and 100% yummy. (Vegetable broth was a great substitute for chicken broth for the kasha varnishkes, the potato latkes tasted great without eggs, agave nectar was just as sweet as honey, and some of the other dishes are usually vegan to begin with.) And as a recent Santa Fe New Mexican article discusses, vegetarian Rosh Hashanah celebrations aren’t so rare these days.

Read more »

Chef Peter Berley will share the love, and his skills, at the JCC in Manhattan on Wed, Oct 10 at a Hazon co-sponsored cooking demonstration. The blurb from the JCC says:

Join us for an exceptional guest chef demonstration with Chef Peter Berley, author of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen (winner of both The IACP Cookbook Award and the James Beard Award) and the newly released Fresh Food Fast, which offers
mouthwatering recipes that are easy to make and designed to satisfy all kinds of appetites. Enjoy an interactive cooking demonstration while you sample flavorful, sophisticated fare including toasted millet pilaf, savory kale with cremini mushrooms, lemon-thyme roast chicken, lemon-rosemary tofu, and vegan spice cake with extra virgin olive oil. Co-sponsored by Hazon.

Wed, Oct 10
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
$55.00 - Member
$65.00 - Non-Member

Your task at hand is fun and four-fold:

1. Register for the class at www.jcckitchen.org or by calling the JCC at 646.505.5708

2. Read The Jew & The Carrot review of Berley’s book The Flexitarian Table by R. Avi Finegold

3. Purchase The Flexitarian Table by clicking the book icon under the “Books we Love” section on this blog (see the left bar)

4. Check out Berley’s new “flexitarian” restaurant, Broadway East, opening October 15 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side

I just came home for Rosh Hashanah to be with my family at my parents’ home for the first time since I started Adamah last May. I expected to miss baskets filled with seasonal, local produce; I anticipated longing for the cultural values of so many people at Adamah. Usually my family does pretty well on the organic front, but hardly any of the produce in the house at any given time is local or fresh. It’s usually organic from California or Central America (the avocados). I was pleasantly surprised.

There is squash and zucchini aplenty on my mother’s kitchen counter. In fact, there is a small garden outside my house that supplies peppers and tomatoes, and all the other produce in the house is from a Morristown, New Jersey farmers market. Somehow, my experience with Hazon and Adamah had an impressive influence on my parents. From visiting the field at Isabella Freedman, talking to me over the course of a few months, sponsoring me in the New York ride and attending the New York ride celebration at the JCC, my mother and father literally took many of the messages home with them along with their delicious lacto-fermented Adamah pickles. Read more »

Bonjour from Paris!! I have spent the last three days biking in France — the first of a seven-week vagabonderie in Europe. (The transition from Adamah to traveling was very quick: a week ago I was eating just-picked cucumbers and harvesting round 57 of our beloved & prolific green beans. I expect that this trip will give me space to think about everything that happened this summer, & fully intend one or two posts on the subject. But for now, though I’m still in my Carharts, I’m in Paris on a rented bicycle and it’s a few hours before Rosh Hashanah.)

One thing I will say about the summer, as it relates to me now in France, is that I’ve never FELT more Jewish my entire life than I did at Adamah. I’ve always been more or less connected and involved with Jewish people and events, but this summer for the first time I developped a Jewish practice that I really connected to, involving food brachot, morning prayer & Shabbat. It was easy this summer, living as I was with all Jews (& all Jews who mostly wanted to practice as I did). But now I’m here, & the holiday is starting soon, & I’m trying to decide how I can still “feel Jewish” while travelling with my non-Jewish friends & staying at a hostel in Pigalle!

Read more »

As we sit down to our Rosh Hashana meals, all eyes go to the challah/apple ceremoniously (or should I say unceremoniously?) dipped in honey. The kids begin to sing that lifeless ditty to the tune of Oh My Darlin’ Clementine “dip the apple in the honey, make a bracha loud and clear. . . . “ (I can’t recall the rest because we banned that song from our house more than a decade ago). Much ink has been spilled (mostly by the honey lobby) perpetuating this custom of dubious and suspect origin in the name of sweetness for the upcoming year. In keeping with the spirit of the New Jewish Food Movement, perhaps we should critically re-examine this custom and explore alternatives. As a maple syrup producer, may I humbly suggest using maple syrup. Read more »

The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery ended this past Sunday and I’ll share some highlights that I think will particularly interest our readers.

• “Ecotarian/Ecotarianism” - What do we call ourselves? “Ecotarian” was proposed as a catchall term for most perspectives basically against industrial food, but which vary in emphasis: locavore, vegetarian, sustainable, organic, committed to humane conditions and slaughter of animals for meat - i.e., that diverse group that is us. But is it precise and universally understood enough let’s say to become a meal option on a plane flight, asked Jessica Lee, who proposed the term?
• “Conscientious Production” - another pair of speakers attempted to categorize eco-friendly values as “conscientious production” (in contrast to conspicuous consumption).

Read more »

(Cross-posted to Jewcy’s new blog, Pickled) 

When you picture the “land flowing with milk and honey” what do you see?  Chances are, like me, you envision a tall glass overflowing with whole-fat milk and a sticky, golden honey bear.  For years, scholars and Torah enthusiasts have bashed this idea, claiming that honey in biblical times actually refers to a sweet dates, and not bee honey. 

Last week’s Jerusalem Post, took the sting out of their argument when it revealed that a Hebrew University archaeologist uncovered the oldest known apiary in the Beit She’an Valley.  The discovered hives “date” back to the 10th to early 9th century BCE and beekeepers estimate that they could produce up to a half ton of honey/year in their heyday.  (More and a recipe below the jump)

Read more »

(Thanks to our friend at Gluten Free Bay for this guest post.)

Holidays are a challenging time to deal with food allergies and intolerances. For those of us who are Jewish, they are a time when we worry that we won’t be able to eat at our friends’ and families’ holiday tables, and that we will have to forego the traditional Jewish delicacies we grew up with.

Fortunately, people with gluten intolerance or celiac disease have more options than ever. Recipes abound, and with creative modification almost any recipe can be made gluten-free. I have posted a round-up of gluten-free ideas for Rosh Hashanah menus, including my honey cake (pictured at left).

I’ve done my best to represent a culturally-diverse wide range of recipes for meat eaters, vegetarians and vegans alike - all totally gluten-free. This is a useful tool for people who are gluten-free as well as anyone hosting an individual who is gluten intolerant at their holiday table.

Shana tovah!

• Price of a Farm Aid Ticket: $52 (+ ticketmaster fees)

• Price of Fung Wah bus from Boston: $15

Standing among a crowd of New Yorkers, surrounded by equal parts marijuana haze, “Stop Factory Farms” t-shirts and average New Yorkers here to see Dave, Neil & the Allman brothers, listening to a Hasidic reggae artist talking about the taste of an unbelievable tomato and getting one’s hands back into the dirt to refresh the connection between humans and the earth: PRICELESS

For me, that was one of several exciting moments during yesterday’s Farm Aid concert, which, as the NYTimes noted, was u.nique in its ability to draw in average-Joe New Yorkers, just in it for the music, organic junkies, and farmers from across the country. Another was actually taking a photo with my co-workers in our new matching “Farmers Kick [Donkey]” t- shirts.

As a representative of a group who spent much of the concert inviting concert-goers to sign up for email action alerts about the Farm Bill, I think this was an amazing opportunity for the burgeoning food movement to move beyond its original supporters. What I told Max Fraser of The Nation yesterday, was that I hoped all of the excitement and publicity around Farm Aid would get concertgoers and other citizens more engaged with food policy i.e. the Farm Bill. My only wish is that I hadn’t seen the box of Sysco potatoes used to make the french fries I bought from one of the “all local, sustainable, organic” food vendors.

Update 09/19/07: Apparently Alice Waters also noticed the Sysco products (as well as the Silk, Chipotle and Horizon booths), and this yielded a panoply of comments on the NYTimes Diner’s Journal article on Farm Aid. Tuesday, Alice responded that she wasn’t intending to diss Farm Aid, but only to dream of how things could be in an “edible utopia.”