Our local Tuv Ha’Aretz ended recently, and we were faced with the decision: do we want to sign up directly with the farm to keep getting its boxes of produce?

It was a no-brainer of a decision. On our “meet-the-farmer” night way back in April, Nigel, our farmer, told us that some of his subscribers had threatened bloody mutiny if he ever stopped producing — or, well, his chickens, to be exact – eggs. At the time, it sounded kind of humorous, but after six months of eating them practically daily, my husband would no doubt be one of those people.

But the eggs weren’t the only reason. After spending a Sukkot Shabbaton on the farm, and standing by it during its recent Medfly crisis, we realized we couldn’t just quit. It was more than the eggs, and more than the produce. It was the people who were bringing us our food, and the fact that we were helping to support them. We had a relationship with Eatwell, and we couldn’t just break it off now. Read more »

Yesterday, my co-worker came into the office and put a copy of the Jewish Daily Forward on my desk. The entire back page was filled with an advertisement, headed by the warning, “Kosher Food Safety Alert.” A few pointed blurbs followed, which exposed several health and safety violations against kosher meat producer, Agriprocessors. Included among them:

“Agriprocessors has been cited more than a dozen times between July 2006 and January 2007 by the USDA for fecal and bile contamination in one of its processing plants.”

“In 2006, the USDA FSIS has cited Agriprocessors more than five times for violations of “mad cow” safety rules.”

The ad, which was paid for by the United Food and Commercial Workers and also ran in The Jewish Week, did not specifically call for a mass boycott of Agriprocessor’s products (though it did warn customers shopping for Thanksgiving turkeys at Trader Joes to check for the Agriprocessors label). Perhaps this was a strategic move on the part of the UFCW in hopes of coming across as a source of information as opposed to a hot-headed activism-focused - and therefore easy to dismiss- organization.

Regardless, there’s also a practical reason not to call for a boycott - for many meat-eating kosher keepers, Agriprocessors is the only option.

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So there I was this morning, in the baking aisle of Whole Foods, buying a few items for Thanksgiving, along with the shopping I was doing for a client. I have made a chocolate-pecan pie with Bourbon several times for Thanksgiving now, and well, I never make it any other time of year, so I was craving it again.

(A disclaimer from the natural foods chef: On holidays, everything I’ve learned about natural foods cooking recedes to the back of my brain, and I allow white sugar and white flour and whatever else to find their way back into my food. It’s only a few times a year, after all.)

I got my organic pecans. I got my fair trade chocolate chips.

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As promised by Jane Goldman in her interview for The Jew & The Carrot, Chow’s all-fried, all Chanukah menu is up and ready to go featuring:

• Potato, turnip and duck fat(?!) Latkes
• Raddichio, Apple, and Squash Tempura
• Fried Chickpeas with Sage
• Sole in Saor
• Honey Fritters with Blood Orange

Kudos to Chow for taking the minhag to eat foods fried in oil for Chanukah to the delicious (if not healthy) extreme.  Check out the full menu here.

Chanukah, Hanukkah, or Hanukah - however you spell it, it’s on it’s way. The festival of lights starts early this year on December 5th.

The Jew & The Carrot offers you the opportunity to give sustainably this year with the Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide!

If you’re not into giving Chanukah gifts, make all your own gifts, or a die hard re-gifter, more power to you. But if you’re looking for something special and sustainable for your friends/family/CSA farmer/yoga instructor/pet etc. this is the list for you.

*As if you need another reason to buy sustainable - for every gift purchased through The Jew & The Carrot’s sustainable gift guide, Amazon will make a donation to the blog!

Shop for Chanukah today with the Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide.

Tuv Ha’Aretz member, Arleen Stern, offered this addendum to my list of “stand up sides” for Thanksgiving: Cranberry and Pear Chutney.  With its unorthodox mix of sweet, tart, and spicy flavors, Arleen says chutney beats out regular old cranberry sauce any day. Even after Thanksgiving, I can easily envision this tangy chutney livening up a pile of latkes or a good, cheesy blintz.

Cranberry and Pear Chutney
(Recipe from Gourmet, November 1991 / makes 4 cups)

Ingredients
1 12-ounce bag of cranberries, picked over
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup raisins
2 pears, peeled and chopped
2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest
1/4 cup minced peeled fresh gingerroot
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/8 teaspoon salt

Preparation
In a heavy saucepan combine the cranberries, the brown sugar, the raisins, the pears, the zest, the gingerroot, the red pepper flakes, the onion, the vinegar, the mustard seeds, and the salt and simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the berries have burst. The chutney keeps, covered and chilled, for 2 weeks. Serve the chutney at room temperature.

Last Sunday, I attended Kosher Fest, the yearly gathering of kosher food and beverage purveyors and other food professionals (held in New York City, naturally). Kosher Fest is no informal synagogue social – it’s a two-day mega event that features the newest, best, and flashiest in kosher food. Page 11 of the 84-page Kosher Fest program guide displays some “impressive facts” including the dollar value of kosher produced goods in the US - $10,500,000,000. In other words, if you make kosher food you’re either at Kosher Fest, or you’re missing out.

Precisely because it’s the “see and be seen” event of the Jewish food year, Kosher Fest serves as an annual barometer of the kosher industry – its health, its growth, and its trends. More interestingly, as I ambled down the aisles of shiny displays, I began to notice how the state of kosher food uncannily mirrors the state of today’s Jewish community.

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My friend (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Simon spent his day pulling feathers out of turkeys.  While I clicked away at a keyboard in my office, he plucked - getting these just-slaughtered birds ready for their Thanksgiving debut.

Simon is the founder of Kosher Conscience, an ethical kosher meat coop in NYC.  Don’t let the word ethical fool you.  A self described “vigorous carnivore,” he is about the farthest thing from a. a vegetarian or b. a hippie as one can possibly get.  He also has a seriously learned Jewish background on which he bases his ethical grounding - which is more than can be said for many Jews out there who wax zealous about ”eco-kashrut,” (ahem, myself included). 

Kosher Conscience has no intention of surreptitiously convincing Jews to eat less meat - you can leave that to PETA.  Instead, it answers the question: how do you enjoy the simcha of meat” without being soulless about it? 

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Rabbi Deborah Prinz is up to something sweet - exploring the Jewish connection to chocolate.  She writes:

“There are some surprising Jewish connections with chocolate, including Jews in the early chocolate trade and early Jewish chocolate makers.  Because the discovery of chocolate and the Spanish Inquisition, along with the Expulsion of Jews from Spain and later Portugal coincided, the Jewish connection to chocolate in the early days was primarily through Conversos in Portugal, France, Holland, the Caribbean and North America.”

Rabbi Prinz and her husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, are planning group trips to explore The Chocolate Trail, and several speaking engagements including an upcoming lecture in Berkeley on December 6.

Find out more about this interesting project here.

Brought to you buy the incredibly sarcastic joys of someecards.com. More of their Thanksgiving-related foolery here.

It’s almost Thanksgiving again - that time of year when families get together around the table and vegetarians (like myself) politely decline the turkey, insisting that there’s plenty on the table they can eat.  Somehow - despite the mound of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, braised greens, salad, green bean casserole, and roasted root veggies on my plate - someone at dinner usually asks me (in a very concerned voice), “But, are you going to have enough?”

For the last several years, health and sustainability advocates have encouraged people to eat less meat, or go vegetarian for a few meals a week.  When a meal does include meat, they recommend that it be treated as a “side dish,” - not as the primary food item on the plate. 

More importantly, traditional side dishes should not play second fiddle to a pile of turkey!  They deserve to be delicious and prepared with love, not as an afterthought.  So, whether your table includes a bird, a Tofurky (though, I don’t recommend it), or absolutely no turkey-like item, celebrate your sides!  

Leah’s Top 5 ”stand up” side dishes…

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The Oxford American Dictionary just announced its word of the year and it’s more than relevant to us all at The Jew and the Carrot. The most important new word for 2007 is: LOCAVORE. Even a more prescriptivist dictionary like Oxford has recognized the new local movement and the importance of a diet based on locally harvested foods. The New York Times covered this story. According to the Times’ Mike Nizza, “The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.” Nizza detailed a bit about the movement’s history up until the coining of the word of the year by Jessica Prentice of San Fransisco in 2005.

The runner-up for the word of the year was “tase,” as in to stun someone with a taser or stun gun.

Local or organic? Farmer’s Market or Supermarket? And what about the GMOs? There’s a lot of talk — and a lot of confusion — these days, about our food. Around the world, people are starting to grapple with the negative impact that large scale, industrial Agribusiness has had over the past half century. As its legacy of soil erosion, polluted groundwater, and chemically-laden fruits and vegetables becomes clear, more and more people are choosing to support organic and local farmers. Emily Freed is one of those farmers. As the Assistant Field Production Manager of Jacobs Farm in Northern California, she’s responsible for over 250-acres of organic farmland. She’s also a Jewish activist who was recently named as one of the Heeb 100 in the category of Food. Despite it being her busy season (she was in the midst of moving about 6,000 lbs of herbs out of the farms each day when we caught up with her), she found the time to discuss the organic movement, the future of food, the connection between agriculture and the environment, and how it’s all related to Judaism.

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When Jane Goldman founded Chow in 2004, she envisioned a new kind of food magazine: one that eschewed the stodgy, elitest air that typifies the world of gourmet food, and embraced the sense of adventure and joy that can be found baking a pie from scratch, or throwing your first dinner party.

With no formal culinary training herself (but plenty of experience in magazines and media), Goldman knew what her audience of home cooks were looking for: entertaining features, friendly culinary advice, instructional videos, regional restaurant recommendations, and a community board (originally the independent Chowhound) where they could chat with one another about their favorite pastime.

Three years, later, Chow - which more recently converted to an online format - is earning a reputation as the go-to spot for enthusiastic - or simply curious - do-it-yourself foodies.

I spoke with Goldman (who was recently named one of Heeb’s 100 most innovative Jews) about the fun side of food, the emerging community of DIY cooks, and, when it comes to “good chow” - why a good poppyseed hamentashen always trumps a latke.

Read the interview below the jump…

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