Imagine you are out on your bike (or running, rock climbing, extreme gardening - whatever you like to do) on a hot day. You’re sweaty and tired, and feeling like you need a boost of energy. The question is, do you reach for a bottle of Gatorade and a squeeze of Power Gu, or are there less expensive, less heavily packaged alternatives? Ok, leading question.
In planning long distance bike rides, Hazon has found it particularly challenging to find kosher-certified sports drinks (who knew this would be such a problem?) that fall in line with our larger food values. But during a typical NY Ride we probably go through about 100 gallons of the stuff! For the last several years, we have used powered Powerade (OU certified) , which we’ve purchased in bulk and mixed with water in big, sturdy coolers. It keeps cyclists happy and at least avoids the plastic bottle pile up. This year, we will probably switch to CLIF’s version (KSA-certified), because powdered Powerade is for some reason harder to come by since the company was purchased by Coca Cola.
For now, and honestly for the sake of convenience, Hazon will stick with the powdered stuff for our bigger rides - but let’s get back to you. There are lots of alternatives for quick homemade power drinks that deliver all the salt and sugar that your body needs after a good sweat without the “tougher-than-thou” image, fake food dyes, or landfill potential.
Here are two recipes to try:
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Thanks to Rhea Kennedy for this post. Rhea blogs over at You Are Delicious.
As a kid growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, I learned a lot about the Iroquois, the group of Native American tribes indigenous to that area. I loved to hear about the stories, beliefs, language, and everyday practices that made up the traditional Iroquois way of life. But what fascinated me the most was, not surprisingly, their food. “They used every part of the animal,” I remember an elementary school teacher explaining to my class. “The meat, the hide or the feathers, the bones—everything!”
Now that I think of it, this was probably my first lesson in sustainable eating. And I was mesmerized. Those traditional Iroquois, as far as I was concerned, were the coolest thing ever.
More and recipes, below the jump…
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Monday (7/21) New York Times article, The Food Chain: Mideast Facing Choice Between Crops and Water, was a good reminder to me as to why I am glad to be involved with Hazon, and the work that we do to create a healthier and more sustainable world. Learning a bit about the crises that have already presented themselves, particularly in the Middle East, also reminded me of just how much work we have ahead of us to bring about a world where healthy, nutritious, ethically raised food is a right of human existence and not a privilege. Water and land shortages are, of course, hitting hardest in the poorest places of the world where there is no money to invest in creative solutions.
The article presents a pretty bleak world. But, Hazon’s Israeli partners – the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning & Leadership (of the Hike) and The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (of the Ride) are both doing critical work towards addressing some of the issues raised in the NYT piece in Israel.
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In 2007, “locavore” was named word of the year by the Oxford New American Dictionary. The concept was heartily endorsed by literary giants such as Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver. As Leah previously posted, even Walmart has gotten on board!
But now, for the second time this week, the NYTimes has “discovered” the local food movement, but now with a new twist: According to today’s article, there is a company out in San Francisco (aka Alice Watersworld) that will plant, tend and harvest an organic garden in your own backyard. Not figuratively. Your. Yard.
My crotchety middle-aged man side says, “In my day, if you wanted a fresh tomato, you went down to the ShopRite and you bought it! If you wanted a backyard garden, you planted it yourself! Bah humbug!”
But most of of me is saying, “Where can I find someone to do this for me, here in New York???”
What do you think? Will Lazyvore be the Word of the Year in 2008, or is this an idea with real potential for helping many more people eat healthily and sustainably while improving their communities in the process?
Ever since that fateful board meeting bagel brunch back in January, Hazon has been on a quest to align our mission to create a “healthier and more sustainable Jewish community” with our own food purchasing and practices. As we do in many situations when searching for guidance, we invited Rabbi Steve Greenberg into the discussion. Steve led our staff in a text study and conversation about what it means to “walk the talk” - and how doing so isn’t always so straightforward, especially when several competing values are at play, or when an organization makes a decision that doesn’t match the values of all the individuals involved.
For example - we know we want to serve healthy food at our events, but how do we respond to a bike ride participant’s dire need for a Snickers bar or Powerade when they want to refuel? Can we serve a kosher-ingredient, but non-hekhshered food at an event, as long as we have a kosher equivalent available? And just how far reaching should our food policies be? Should they only impact what we buy as an organization for participants, or should they dictate what food our staff can eat in the office, or eat out “publicly,” while at official Hazon meetings?
We think the beginning of creating a comprehensive food policy is to explore and define our Food Values, which will serve as the ideological foundation from which all strategies and recommendations will be derived. The Statement below is a draft - we welcome your comments and suggestions about how we can make it stronger. And if your organization or family is dealing with similar questions, we’d love to hear how you’re going about making those decisions.
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As The Jew & The Carrot readers might remember, I am a complete fool for this chocolate cake - the one my mom made for every birthday party from about 1986-1993. Of course I adored - and still do - anything chocolate, but the thing that truly solidified my obsession was the icing on top: sweet buttercream dyed pink, green, or blue with a few drops of liquid food coloring. (I used to love taking the “hats” off the little David the Gnome-like bottles and watching the colors swirl into the white frosting.)
Unfortunately, according to the Baltimore Sun, in addition to causing cancer in lab rats, synthetic food dyes are now linked to behavior problems in children:
“New research indicates the chemicals can disrupt some children’s behavior, and activists and consumer groups are asking for bans or limits on the dyes. A prestigious British medical journal recommended that doctors use dye-free diets as a first-line treatment for some behavior disorders; British regulators are pressuring companies to stop using the dyes, and some are complying. The issue has generated much less attention on this side of the Atlantic. The FDA says the dyes are safe, and has no plans to limit their use.”
Considering the E. coli and Mad Cow Disease outbreaks in FDA approved foods over the last several years, I’m not so sure that trusting the FDA on this one is the best idea. It certainly would make me think twice about buying that Hannah Montana ice cream cake for my future kid’s bat mitzvah kiddush. Luckily, I can make my favorite cake a lovely shade of pink or green by adding a few drops of beet or spinach juice into the frosting. (Don’t worry, just like Jessica Seinfeld promises, you won’t be able to taste it!)
(hat tip Treehugger)
From Dear Abby to Ask Umbra, advice columns are a time-honored method publications use to engage readers on a personal level, while sharing expertise and etiquette from a trusted expert. But what happens when the “expert” (and I use that term loosely here) is stumped with a question of her own? Today, I thought I’d switch things up and turn to you with a CSA-related quandary that has been gnawing at me for the last few weeks. Miss Manners might tsk tsk my table-turning, but this is the blogosphere, after all, and I’m desperate for a little good advice…
Dear Gentle Eaters,
After nearly being shut out of my CSA this year, I was fortunate enough to secure a share. My two roommates said they wanted in, so we split full vegetable and fruit shares three-ways, which cut down on the cost, and - I thought - meant we’d split the eating duties. But several weeks in, I seem to be the only one using the vegetables! Over the last three weeks, one roommate made a chocolate beet cake, and the other made a turnip mash (both delicious), but the responsibility of using the drawer full of broccoli, lettuce, kale, cukes, blueberries, and just about everything else, has fallen on my shoulders.
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Zane Caplansky is not your average deli man, if there ever was such a thing. After a peripatetic culinary career which has included opening a tea house on the steppes of the Himalayas to managing an Indian pizza restaurant, Caplansky has now brought smoked meat manna to Montrealers living in the otherwise desert of corned beef-oriented Toronto.
A Toronto native, Zane’s been hooked on smoked meat since he was 16, when his then girlfriend took him to the famed Schwartz’s Deli in Montreal. A die-hard fan since, he has even been known to sneak away from ashram study north of the city to get his Schwartz’s fix. Now, he has brought the house-cured and smoked tradition to a tiny but fully outfitted kitchen in downtown Toronto, which includes an in-house smoker—a rarity today.
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I used to not really get quinoa. I’m sure there are some of you nodding your head in agreement. It’s hard to get excited about something that has so little taste.
But that’s because I had only had it mainly by itself. Quinoa is so ubiquitous here in the Bay Area, that once my friend Dorit showed up at a potluck announcing “I brought the requisite Berkeley quinoa,” and we all knew exactly what she meant. A Berkeley Jewish potluck isn’t a potluck without someone making quinoa.
But I digress.
I have since come around on the neutral little seed. First of all, it has protein. Second, it takes on whatever flavor you put with it. It mixes well with other ingredients and doesn’t dominate. And, it cooks in only 15 minutes.
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Hazon and The Jew & The Carrot may be the homes of the new Jewish food movement, but in a way the general food movement, even without the ‘Jewish’ modifier, is still very Jewish. I am not referring to the fact that, much like many progressive movements, a disproportionate number of the food movement’s major protagonists, like Michael Pollen, Peter Singer, or Mollie Katzen, are Jewish. Rather, that the questions and challenges posed by the food movement are the types of questions and challenges the Jewish tradition has been raising for millennia.
Remember… the first conflict we see in the Bible is over, of all things, forbidden fruit!
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Apparently Beijing has ordered the 112 approved restaurants for the Olympics to stop serving dog with “the sensitivity of foreign visitors in mind.”
Vegetarian satire aside, I extremely disagree with this decision. Dog, as unappetizing it might be to us sheltered Americans, is a part of the cuisine of a large part of the world (the extent of which I can’t say).
But what if Israel hosted the Olympics — would we put aside gefilte fish? (Hell, even lots of Jews think that one’s nasty.) Or ban schnitzel? Hummus? Olives? No way. That’s what we eat. We don’t have to apologize to anyone for kashrut, nor latkes.
China shouldn’t have to either.
(Hat tip on article and pic to Illiterate Electorate.)
I’m sure many of my fellow foodies and followers of R. Cookie Monster (aka the “Om-nom-nom Rebbe”) eagerly devoured David Leite’s recent article in the NYTimes about his quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
According to the insider tips he got from such experts as fellow M.O.T. Maury Rubin (owner of City Bakery, where you can get the best hot chocolate this side of Babette’s Feast), the key to really great chocolate chip cookies isn’t the chocolate (although that’s crucial, of course), or the dough, but allowing the dough to rest for at least 24 hours. That’s right, the key to great chocolate chip cookies is right there in Genesis 2:2!
So why not make yourself a glorious batch of Havdalah House Cookies(tm) this weekend? Make the dough on Friday afternoon, and then bake them Saturday night!! Earn extra eco-kosher points by using chocolate from the handy Jcarrot sustainable kosher chocolate list.
And now, according to another recent article, you can enjoy those cookies with a tall glass of giraffe’s milk, which Israeli rabbis have now declared kosher.
No, not for real, but some food-based humor from t-shirt jokesters KosherHam.com, which is (yet another) clever culture jokes apparel site. But as a testament to our people’s connection to food, here are my favorite food jokes/designs:
Judging from some recent food journalism, using spurious logic to rationalize the choice not to eat ethically is as easy as slathering a mound of Jif Creamy onto a slice of Wonder Bread.
For example, Portland, Oregon is a great city for green living. Maybe that’s why the Oregonian, our newspaper, recently started a weekly green living column — although with dubious results. The inaugural piece was about how to not feel guilty when you *don’t* buy organic. The gist of the article was that as long as you avoid the “Dirty Dozen” – the twelve foods most contaminated with pesticides — you’re a-okay. As columnist Shelby Wood giddily reported:
With the Dirty Dozen in mind, I paid the $1 premium for organic spinach (No. 11 on the Environmental Working Group’s list) at the grocery last week. But I saved $1 on conventional broccoli (No. 35) and 20 cents a pound on bananas (No. 37). After all, I’ve been eating those for 34 years. And I’m not dead yet.
Great job, Shelby. Perhaps you’d like to celebrate by investing that $1.20 you saved on some low-tar cigarettes.
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