Hazon was recently featured in a podcast series by United Jewish Communities (UJC). The topic? Food, sustainability, and Jewish tradition - natch.
The podcast features: Moderator Nigel Savage, Hazon’s Founder and Director; Lisa Kleinman of UJC, ; Simon Feil, Founder of Kosher Conscience; natural foods chef (and The Jew & The Carrot blogger) Linda Lantos; and me as Editor-in-Chief of The Jew & The Carrot
Want a teaser?
Simon Feil on his shift from “vigorous carnivorism” to more compassionate meat-eating ways
Leah Koenig on growing up eating rampant treyf
Nigel Savage on the 5 brave people who travelled into the Agriprocessors factory
Lisa Kleinman on raising two amazing, foodie kids
Linda Lantos on how food connected her to Jewish tradition, and the natural world
Download the podcast from UJC’s website, or click directly to it here.
Joan Nathan knows Jewish food. Author of culinary tomes like Jewish Cooking in America, Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook, and The Jewish Holiday Baker, she sets the standard for elegant, timeless Jewish cooking (and not just shmaltzy Ashkenazi fare either - she is currently researching for a new book on Jewish cuisine in France).
Ms. Nathan recently delved head first into the “new Jewish food movement.” In an article she wrote for the New York Times called, “Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul,” she explored the work organizations, farmers, and companies are doing across the country that ties together food, faith, and farming. (Hazon - and this very blog - enjoyed healthy shoutouts in the article.)
The Jew & The Carrot sat down with Ms. Nathan the week before Rosh Hashanah - just before the start of the “high season” of high holiday cooking frenzy. She shared her take on traditional Jewish cooking, new conversations about food and Jewish community, and her most important tip for hosting a successful Rosh Hashanah meal.
LK: Your recent New York Times article, “Of Church and Steak,” showed how many organizations and individuals connect faith, food, and farming. What was the most interesting discovery you made about Jewish food while working on that article?
JN: I think the most surprising thing to me was finding out about Orthodox Jews’ interest in sustainability. I expected it more from other populations in the Jewish community, but I discovered many Orthodox people are interested too. I also heard a lot about the idea of Jewish stewardship, which I hadn’t heard before. I’m not sure [it’s a mainstream conversation in the Jewish community], but it’s there.
Read more »
Like many foodies, I imagine, I’m always experimenting in the kitchen. Chocolate and tea are favorite exploratory ingredients, but with Rosh Hashanah just around the corner lately I’ve had apples and honey on the brain. So yesterday afternoon I decided to take a break from schoolwork by playing around with my recipe for Honey-Vanilla Challah. A few hours later I had a woven round loaf of Apple-Honey Challah sitting on the kitchen counter. This was the ‘test loaf’ that, if delectable, would make a return appearance at Rosh Hashanah dinner. Shown above sliced and covered in blueberry-peach butter, I’m happy to report that this challah was a scrumptious combination of three Rosh Hashanah symbols: apples, honey and round challah goodness. An encore is definitely in order.
Shabbat challot are usually baked into braids made with three, four or six strands of dough, and according to Gil Marks the resulting spiral symbolizes the ascent to heaven. But on Rosh Hashanah challah is shaped into round loaves of bread whose circular form represents the continuity of life. Other festival shapes include crowns (symbolizing God’s place as ruler of the universe), ladders (recalling Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:10), keys (symbolizing the gates of heaven) and on Yom Kippur, a bird shape (symbolizing the forgiveness of sins and that one’s prayers soar to heaven.) I’ve included instructions for making round loaves of challah, woven loaves and the traditional braid here. If the kitchen spirit moves you, I say go with it!
One of the big international foodie events, the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, starts tomorrow, 9/8. The topic this year is Food and Morality
- Food and quality – should food be good?
- Food and safety and the environment – should food be clean?
- Food and justice – should food be fair?
- Food and human nature – is it right to take pleasure in food?
and the keynote speaker is Ruth Reichl. The Co-chairs of the program are notable food writers Paul Levy and Claudia Roden. Many of the topics are of particular interest to our readers - ‘ecotarianism,’ organics and consumerism, meat-eating and vegetarianism, eating local, and there’s even one session devoted to Jewish perspectives, at which yours truly is participating. I’m especially intrigued by one of my co-panelists Susan Weingarten’s topic ‘Eating People is Wrong: Cannibalism and Charoset.’ Wouldn’t you be intrigued, too? See the whole list of papers here. I had wonderful dinner table conversation with participants tonight over Jain vegetarianism, Michael Pollan, Irish Jewish foodways, Catholic Bavarian saints festivals, and selling olive oil and wine. I’ll have more to report later.
As Ben, Aaron, and other The Jew & The Carrot bloggers have mentioned in previous posts, this country’s obsession with bottled water has reached epi(demi)c proportions. We spend 10.8 billion dollars/year on bottled water (and growing), while people in many US cities could enjoy water straight from the tap. Our addiction adds up - in dollars, in packaging going to the landfill, and in CO2 (from importing water to the US from far off places like Fiji.)
I’m personally ready to put a cap on my own bottled water consumption - give me a Britta and a good looking Nalgene and I’ll get along just fine. I’m not, however, ready to let go of seltzer water - that “traditional Jewish” bubbly beverage that just feels a little more exciting than its non-carbonated cousin. Luckily, I just found out about a company called Fountain Jet that offers a “Home Soda Maker” - that promises as little or as much seltzer as you want “with the push of a button.” I know I sound like an informercial, but I’m pretty excited to think that I could make all my own seltzer for the Rosh Hashanah table and not have a pile of plastic messing up the kitchen afterwards.
Check out Fountain Jet here.
When I last left you, I had just placed approximately 4 1/2 pounds of chicken into a large zip-lock bag to marinade in some lovely pomegranate juice with a cinnamon stick….This marinating went on for 2 days (I kid you not). Each day I would turn the bag to make sure that the chicken pieces were evenly absorbing the wonderful pomegranate flavor. I took a couple of sniffs to make sure that the chicken still smelled fresh, which I assure you it did, in fact the only thing I smelled was the pomegranate juice infused with fragrant cinnamon (the trick is to make sure that the chicken is super fresh when you buy it – check that the expiration date is a long way off, but more importantly check that it doesn’t have that funky old chicken smell …)
On Friday morning I took the bag out of the fridge and placed the contents of the bag - chicken, marinade, and all into a baking pan. I covered the birds and placed them into my (newly sort of repaired) oven preheated to 350 degrees. The chicken baked in the oven for approximately 1 hour undisturbed. When I pulled the chicken out of the oven the meat was moist and plump.
Read more »
The recent controversy regarding the custom of Kapparot (see article in the Forward) made me realize that Kapparot is virtually the only remaining ritual that uses an animal sacrifice as an atonement for human sin. In Temple times, any inadvertent sin had a corresponding animal sacrifice that was intended to cause the sinner to contemplate the nature of sin and how this animal is now losing its life instead of the sinner. pretty powerful stuff, if your environment is agrarian and animals are preciously traded commodities. Today however, things are much different. Read more »
It’s hard to believe, but this time next week Jews across the world will be sitting down for Rosh Hashana meals. Are you hosting a meal, or in charge of a potluck dish and still in need of some inspiration? Don’t panic - The Jew & The Carrot has the perfect menu for your holiday table.
- Check out the mouthwatering pictures below and click here for recipes and menu ideas.
- And for ideas and resources to make your Rosh Hashanah healthy and sustainable, click here!
Roasted Root Veggies
Rosh Hashana Citrus Salad
Baked Apples with Candied Walnuts
Kashi is running a promotion right now, where you can virtually “trade-in” your unhealthy snacks (beef jerky, nachos, cotton candy, etc) for some actual “healthy” ones, free of charge! OK, so maybe a dark-chocolate oatmeal cookie isn’t the most healthy snack in the world either, but at least it’s:
a) whole grain
b) chocolate
c) free through the mail!
Get yours while supplies last.
Although I am no fan of flying, I do find that one of its perks is having uninterrupted reading time. I was already looking forward to my husband and I celebrating our one-year anniversary with four days in Oregon. But when the New Yorker arrived last week, and I saw it was a double issue dedicated to food, it made me even more excited — what better airplane reading could there be?
It didn’t disappoint. Read more »
The New York Times reported today that school cafeterias across the country are going on a diet:
As students return to school this week, some are finding unusual entries on the list of class rules: fewer fried foods, smaller servings and no cupcakes. School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are overweight.
In California, deep fryers have been banned, so chicken nuggets and fries are now baked. Sweet tea is off the menu in one Alabama school. In New Jersey, 20-ounce sports drinks have been cut back to 12 ounces.
Overall, schools report that the changes are being met with fanfare from health officials and shrugs (but not disgust) from students. Some of the changes, however, have parents up in arms:
Read more »
Last week I made a summer lunch of Israeli salad (tomato, crisp green peppers, cucumber, chickpeas and bright purple sweet onion) and sweet corn-on-the-cob with salt, pepper, and a generous squeeze of lime juice. As I sat down to the table, I called a friend whom I hadn’t spoken to in a while. I nibbled my way through the salad as I recalled tales from a recent trip to Chicago and she caught me up about her summer studying Hindi.
After we hung up I started on the corn, which was too unwieldy to eat while juggling a cell phone. As I picked up the cob, it hit me how freaking beautiful it was, with its swollen rows of fruit and lacey strands of silk. It seemed holy - worthy of a blessing.
Read more »
Congratulations to Shahar Peer, who became the first Israeli woman to reach the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open by defeating Agnieszka Radwanska last night in the fourth round.
Unfortunately, the reporting of Peer’s accomplishment in the Times threatened to incite an international food-incident, when reporter Karen Crouse referred to Peer being “as at home as pastrami between two slices of rye bread” amongst all the Israeli fans at Flushing Meadows.
As an article in New York Magazine correctly (if snarkily) noted, Katz’s Deli is not the official cuisine of the Jewish people - especially not Sabras!! Now, if she had written that Shahar had felt as at home as a fried chickpea surrounded by tahini sauce, well, it still would have been ridiculous, but at least more culinarily accurate.
Best of luck to Peer, and if she drinks enough Kaballah Energy Drink, I’m sure she’ll do great in her match against Anna Chakvetadze tomorrow.
Wonderful wishes for a fun Labor Day from The Jew & The Carrot. The Hazon staff is finishing up our 7th Annual New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride.
(200 Riders | 100 Crew | 120 miles - Falls Village, CT to NYC!)
For more information about The NY Ride or Hazon, click here.
Check back tomorrow for regularly scheduled progamming :)
