When Brian Malarkey was trying out to be a contestant on Bravo’s favorite TV show, “Top Chef,” I can guess that he never imagined that one day soon, he would be presiding over a Manischewitz cook-off.
But there he was today at a San Francisco Hilton on the border of Chinatown, looking dapper in a pin-striped suit rather than his chef whites, acting as emcee for the Simply Manischewitz regional semi-finals. This is the second year of the contest.

With some of my regular clients on vacation, I didn’t have anything in particular to do today. So when I heard about the Manischewitz cook-off, I thought, “I’m into food. I’m into Jews. Why the hell not?”

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The wonderful Tuv Ha’Aretz Community-Supported Agriculture group at the JCC Houston came up with this Top-10 list of must have items in order to maximize the produce from your CSA share.  Turns out, the list is pretty handy for any Jewish food enthusiast (or even the occasional ”reluctant” foodie).

Didn’t think an ice cube tray was a fundamental part of using your CSA share?  Think again!

Check out the full list here.  And if you have any helpful kitchen doo-dads that you think should be on the list, leave a comment below! 

12/10/07

The boots had been sitting in a bag for weeks. They’d been moved from front hall to bathroom to tub and outside as needed, and I didnt know what to do with them. I’d worn my galoshes when I’d gone to help slaughter 3 turkeys the Thursday before Thanksgiving at a farm in upstate NY. That powerful first for me went very calmly and cleanly and my boots remained unmarked. I was surprised, but pleasantly - I had worn the boots and my raincoat with the expectation that they would get covered in blood - ruined.  I wore them again that Monday when I went to help slaughter the 24 turkeys we (my ethical kosher meat venture, Kosher Conscience) would need for the holiday. I was out of my mind with details and satisfaction and fear, but also relieved that I’d had the warm up the week before so I knew what the process would look like, feel like. That day went very differently from everything I expected and my boots by days end had quite a bit of blood on them, as did my  clothes and my skin. My skin and my clothes needed to be washed, no question. If only for sanitary purposes if not for comfort as well. But the boots became less clear, for reasons I didn’t see coming.

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There are a lot of opportunities to win things around here at The Jew & The Carrot. In this case, you can win a print of the stunning photo above, taken by Karl Schatz.

Karl is one half of the husband and wife duo who, along with his wife Margaret Hathaway, left New York City to embark on a cross-country research adventure on sustainable living and goat farming, and wrote a book about it called The Year of the Goat.

Karl kindly donated this beautiful print to be raffled off - the very print that will be sent (framed) to a lucky winner.

Simply purchase a $5 raffle ticket (or two, or seven!) to be entered in the raffle for Karl’s photo. All proceeds go to Hazon, and the winner will be announced on January 8th, 2007 at Hazon’s New York Ride Launch Party.

Buy your ticket here.
Read the exclusive interview with Karl and Margaret here.
purchase a copy of The Year of the Goat here.

Warning, a shameless plug follows: Some of you at the food conference might have met a brother-sister pair Lisa Schachter-Brooks and Stephen Brooks. For the very first time, their company, Costa Rican Adventures, is offering a tour specifically for people who are interested to know where their food comes from. It begins in late February.

While Lisa lives here in the Bay Area (and helped coordinate our local Tuv Ha’Aretz chapter), Stephen has been mostly based in Costa Rica since he graduated from college (now, quite some time ago). He lives on an organic farm called Punta Mona, where he plays host to the numerous high schoolers they bring down, as well as other travelers.

To read more about their edible Costa Rica tour, click here.

Ahh the food conference …. my head is still spinning from all of the wonderful experiences I had. People have asked me what it was like at the conference and its still hard for me to fully describe. It was an environment where everyone was truly both always learning and teaching. It didn’t only happen at sessions - it happened over meals, conversations, the communal celebration of Chanukah and in quiet moments alone when people reflected  on their own personal food journeys.

I had the priviledge of sitting on a pannel and doing a cooking demo at the conference. On the panel Feeding the Masses: Successes and Challenges of Improving Institutional Food Systems I talk about the work that The Childrens Aid Society does to provide better food to the thousands of children they serve in New York city. I described my experiences helping develop programs, training educators, and teaching nutrition through hands on cooking to kids and parents in East Harlem and the Bronx (if you were not able to attend the panel and want to know more let me know). In the cooking demo entitled “Real Food for Your Real Life” we had Curried Red Lentil Soup, a wonderful Garlic “Ranch” Dressing (or dip), and Pumpkin Seed Pesto on the menu (see recipes below the jump).

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So maybe they did stop their covert nuclear activities almost five years ago, but now there’s a chance that we’re supporting the axis-of-evil with our choice of snack:

World Briefing | Middle East
Israel: The Hunt for Illegal Nuts

Published: November 22, 2007

Israel has asked the United States for help in cracking down on illegal pistachio nut imports from Iran, an official said, after Washington warned that the trade was hurting efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel imports pistachios worth $26 million annually, mostly from Turkey. But Washington says nuts from Iran are mixed in with the shipments, undermining economic sanctions meant to force Iran to stop developing its nuclear abilities. An Agriculture Ministry official said Israel was willing to help but, as in the past, the problem was how to figure out the nuts’ origin.

A much more adversarial description of this exchange can be found here.

Fear not, gentle readers - if you want your eating to contribute to peace, love, and understanding, enter the Build a Sustainable Gingerbread House competition over at Bake for Change.

And about those pistachios…maybe we should just start a nougat for nukes exchange program .

Somewhere during the flurry of the Food Conference and the final shift from autumn into cozy “wintery-mix” weather, The Jew & The Carrot turned one year old.

This first year was a biggie - mentions in the Wall Street Journal and
New York Times, two awards (best new blog and best kosher food/recipe blog from The Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards), interviews with food experts like Michael Pollan and Joan Nathan…phew. We hope that our second year will continue to bring growth to the blog, as we continue to bring you the best news, writing, recipes, and resources from the new Jewish food movement.

In celebration of this milestone, we have two gifts for readers. The first is a recipe for my mom’s “Moistest Chocolate Cake.” This is the best chocolate cake (no, seriously) and a birthday staple in my house growing up. I’ve written about this recipe elsewhere, but couldn’t resist sharing it with you all in honor of The Jew & The Carrot’s birthday. Get the recipe below the jump.

The second is a chance to win a copy of Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables! Farmer John is a CSA farmer based in Illinois. He’s got a serious farming heritage and one of the most entertaining personalities in the fields (note the red feather boa accompanying the coveralls on the book cover.) His cookbook offers seasonal recipes, photos, and stories from his farm Angelic Organics. Answer this question to be entered into a raffle for a copy of Farmer John’s Cookbook: What is your favorite birthday food tradition? (It can be wacky or sweet - but it has to be something food-related that you do for birthdays. Only related comments will be entered into the raffle.)

Cake recipe below the jump… Read more »

Hazon was delighted to welcome Chef Gil Marks, author of several cookbooks including the James Beard award-winning Olive Trees and Honeyto the Hazon Food Conference. I already knew before the conference that Chef Marks was an afficianado of Jewish food history and culture. What I didn’t know was that he was a lightning fast chef as well!

Chef Marks put Rachel Ray’s 30-minute meals to shame, by preparing four entirely different, entirely fried Chanukah goodies from around the world in an hour and 15 minutes. (He also managed to be quite entertaining while avoiding the “words” Yum-O and EVOO). His dishes included:

Keftes de Espinaca (Sephardic Spinach Patties)
Cassola (Roman Sweet Cheese Pancakes)
Couscous Hiloo (Couscous with Dried Fruits and Nuts)
Bimuelos/Zelebi (Sephardic Doughnuts/Funnel Cakes)

The recipes are listed below the jump - and will be as delicious on a random Sunday as they were at The Food Conference!

Purchase Olive Trees and Honey here.

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Here’s a great article in the New York Jewish Week about The Hazon Food Conference and - no surprise - the schecting.

What’s Fair And Fowl: An Eco-Kosher Tale
By Elicia Brown

Talia leans in conversationally, as she often does on long car trips when puzzling over the earth’s mysteries. This time, she catches me off guard: “And how,” my 5-year-old daughter asks, “does the chicken make the chicken?”

I envision a fluffy, white-feathered hen, a live squawking bird, giving birth to a tender drumstick. I take a deep breath. “Well, honey, I say, stealing a queasy glance at my husband before answering Talia, “the chicken we eat is the chicken. It’s dead.”

Talia screams.

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Both amendments– Lugar-Lautenberg’s “Fresh Act” and Dorgan-Grassley’s payment limits– that would have included meaningful farm subsidy reform in the 2007 farm bill failed in the past two days, the latter falling only 4 votes short of the 60 it needed to be adopted.

The Environmental Working Group and the Center for Rural Affairs blogs have some interesting analysis of how the Democrats sabotaged reform by playing politics with the vote’s parliamentary procedure, in order to prevent Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) from embarrassing her own party. They place blame for the failure of Dorgan-Grassley squarely on the Democratic leadership and those reform-touting Senators who voted against the amendment.

A number of other amendments to reform agriculture policy remain to be voted on, including Sen. Tester’s (D-MT) attempt to “beef up” the new Livestock Title by adding a “packer ban” to check the power of industrial meatpackers and processors by reinforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act’s rules against market manipulation. Apparently, the meat industry has been hard at work preventing this amendment from passing.

You can watch here.

(cross posted on the US Food Policy blog)

Below is the full text of Friday night’s keynote at The Hazon Food Conference.  The keynote was given by Nati Passow, co-founder of The Jewish Farm School.  It’s a long post, but definitely worth the read - even if you have to print it out (on recycled paper of course!) and take it home.

(Nati’s on the right, next to Simcha Schwartz.  Photo by Sabrina Malach.)

Hazon Food Conference
December 6-9, 2007
Keynote Address: Nati Passow 

Thank you Nigel. Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach. It is a great honor to be here with you all tonight. Nigel suggested that I begin by sharing my story with you, my connection and relationship to food, which I think is a great way to begin this talk, because one of the things I like most about food is that sitting down to a meal is a great excuse to spend time with friends and listen to each other’s stories. So here is a little bit of mine.

Seven years ago I took a Sabbatical. I left university for the year and traveled in Israel. I studied in yeshiva, toured the country and then settled into an apartment in Jerusalem. After having little success finding a job, I decided to enjoy my sabbatical for what it was time to just be present. This was when I discovered good coffee, which for any honorable coffee drinker is a moment you never forget. An older friend of mine sat me down and said that if I was going to drink coffee everyday, I should make it good. Buy whole beans, grind them myself and brew something delicious.

The coffee was my gateway drug to the world of slow food.

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5-Spoke Creamery - As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, 5-Spoke Creamery is the place to look if you’re looking for raw milk, artisanal, amazingly delicious, and kosher certified (Kof-K) cheese.  Now, it seems event the New York Times agrees.  Hazon was blessed to have Alan, Barbara, and their kids serving up samples of their delicious cheese - including their recently released, Tumbleweed variety (see left) - at the Food Conference.  Click here, to find out where you can get your hands on some.

Lantern Books Essay Contest - Lantern Books - publishers of books on animal advocacy, religion, social justice, and environmentalism announced its 2007 essay competition. The aim of the competition is to allow new thinking to emerge on the key subjects of Lantern’s publishing program and to encourage new voices to step forward to shape the debate for the future.

The first prize is $1000. There is no entry fee. Essays should be no longer than 1500 words. The deadline is December 31, 2007.  For complete guidelines, as well as prior years’ winning essays, click here.

The personal responses to last Friday’s goat schecting were varied and intense. Thanks to Joti Levy for sharing her reflections in this guest post.

Friday morning I woke at my regular 6 am. The difference was that everyone else in the house also woke up, and more people were gathering. It felt like the cozy feeling of going on a road trip with people you love, except the road trip was down the block to the sadeh (field) to slaughter the goats.

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