It’s Sunday morning at 9:30 and my family has already been up for hours which, yes, I find somewhat disturbing, and means, among other things, that this might be a good time to make a real breakfast, instead of just to-each-his-own bowls of cereal or a quick French toast. We sometimes get in the mood for fancier breakfast fare, but I’ve become a bit of a zealot about not letting leftover challah go to waste, and I definitely want something sweet. Behold, Crème Brulee French Toast! It’s an incredibly easy recipe (no blowtorch required) that’s delicious and delightful.
Recipe (plus another recipe for particularly awesome bran muffins), after the jump!
Shabbat Shalom from everyone at Hazon and The New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride!
To find out about the Ride or to sponsor a rider, click here.
My senior year of college wasn’t all that long ago (going on 5 years), but it feels like a lifetime. So it’s hard for me to remember now the sense of low-grade panic that consumed me during most of second semester as I struggled to figure out “what I was going to do with my life.” Luckily, one of my house mates told me about WWOOF – an international organization that pairs up willing volunteers with work stays on organic farms across the world. Within the span of a week, I had checked out WWOOF online, paid for my membership via the web, emailed a handful of farms halfway across the world, and secured myself a real life summer stint on an organic vineyard in Tuscany.
At the time, I didn’t quite understand how remarkable this process was, or that fact that a mere decade or two earlier, it would not have been possible. But the Eat Well Guide understands – and their new resource Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Movement is out to clue everyone else in.
Yes, that’s right. We Californians are blessed in many ways to get locally-grown food easily, but wheat does not usually fall into that category. But Eatwell Farm, which provides Berkeley’s Tuv Ha’Aretz chapter, is now offering wheat berries at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market in San Francisco. Consumers can actually grind their own berries to make flour. Check it out here.
Bikes. Waffles. Calls to worship. What could be more tailor-made for Hazon than that? Did I mention the factory farm chickens attached to the back of this baffling, waffling vehicle? The shotgun and machete attachments?
I just came across this strange short film today, and while I’m not sure what to make of its deadpan, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the state of the world’s food systems, violent religious conflicts and our over-reliance on technology, all I know is that it made me laugh, and it made me want waffles.
And that’s good enough for me.
I first started out in the Jewish environmental movement back in 1981 (I was already an environmentalist of the 70’s variety in high school). Back then the majority of Jewish enviros were ideological vegetarians, the backbone of Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA), people like Richard Schwartz, Jonathan Wolf, and Roberta Kalechofsky. Their zeal for vegetarianism was as strong as any other passion they had for the earth.
Though I empathized with their feelings, they never rang true for me. I’ve been a vegetarian for about 30 years, well more than half my life, and well before I was into Judaism. When people asked me why, I could give a dozen reasons, related to human health, the health of the land, the suffering of animals, etc. But I’ve never been an ideological vegetarian, and I never thought it was my mission to get everyone to stop eating meat.
That’s not to say that I never thought it would be a good idea for more people to “go veg.” Especially now, when we hear about things like what happens on the killing floor at Agriprocessors, vegetarianism looks like the better option.(1) Agriprocessors is not the only great argument for vegetarianism. So is global climate change—a huge percentage of the global warming gases emitted by our civilization come from the two ends of a cow.
Tonight I made myself a very simple, and surprisingly wonderful dinner: roasted potatoes with cherry tomatoes, cucumber, chives and parsley in a lemon olive-oil vinaigrette. It was so simple, so fast – and the contrast of the warm, creamy potatoes with the crisp cucumber and acidic tomatoes was perfect for a summer evening. I finished off my meal with a few slices of locally grown (and very tasty) watermelon.
The meal was a reminder to me about the beauty of eating fresh, local produce. And while I know it’s not the most well-balanced meal, I was eating alone while I cleaned out my apartment before moving from Chicago to the East Coast.
In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s tomato season. Our CSA specializes in Heirloom tomatoes, so this means at this time of year, we usually get three different varieties in our weekly box: usually grape tomatoes, heirlooms and one other variety like Romas. While the temptation is always there just to eat them fresh with just a sprinkling of salt, I’ve discovered two new dishes this summer that are worth sharing.
The first requires slow-roasting cherry or grape tomatoes. I actually discovered this technique last summer, and there are plenty of food blogs to offer tips. I just cut the tomatoes open, put them on a baking sheet, drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil and sea salt, and put in a low oven (about 225 degrees) for a minimum of two hours. If you have the time, three or four hours is even better. Slow-roasting brings out all their tomato-ey essence. They also store longer that way; you can cover them in a bit of olive oil and keep them in the fridge.
The week is already off to a big foodie Jewy start:
Hazon’s New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride is starts this weekend! The office is buzzing with last minute details, and piles of water bottles, cue sheets and other random gear are sprouting on just about every available surface. In homage to the bike-mania, I thought I’d round up a few of a growing list of green-minded food companies, which make a point of delivering their goodies to customers via two wheels.
Bobby G’s Pizzeria Based in Berkeley, this pizza company is working to create “Go Green Go” – a Delivery Service with a Conscience. Their fleet will include bikes, as well as hybrid cars.
A friend sent along a post from Gizmodo. In the post, I read about two new offerings in the Itunes App Store. For the uninitiated or the stranded on desert islands: the Itunes App Store is a place where you can buy software for your IPhone or Ipod Touch. There are awesome offerings and some really impressive ones in the realms of world religions. I have a Quran, Bible, Catholic Calendar, and other religiously oriented pieces. All the programs I have mentioned are free.
Enter “IBlessing” and “ParveOMeter” Each program is cute enough and functions without glitches.
IBlessing gives you guidance in reciting the blessing over food products as well as Shema Yisrael, Modeh Ani, hand washing and a shortened version of Birkat Hamazon (Grace After Meals). The tool is useful for those who are new to the
experiences of regular blessings recitation or for encouraging children, students or really anyone who wants to learn.
Most people adopt the religious practices of their parents. I certainly did. I went to church practically every Sunday until I left for college, and then told my parents I needed to find what was right for me. Nearly a decade later, the practice that ended up being right was going to shul (or an independent egalitarian minyan) practically every Shabbat.
But becoming Jewish isn’t an easy task – especially without having the natural guide of Jewish family traditions to rely on. There are some really tough choices in daily practice that one must make. My toughest to date has been the practice of kashrut.Just ask my rabbi, I’m really good at making very plausible excuses of why I’m not yet keeping kosher. My roommate would never respect a kosher kitchen, I would never go to my parents’ house and tell them I was unable to eat off their dishes (the same dishes I’d been eating off of since I was a kid)…
Thanks to Gary Rendsburg for this guest post. Professor Rendsburg holds the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History and serves as Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers.
This week’s parasha (portion of the Torah reading) includes several well-known passages, which indicate ancient Israel’s remarkable awareness of its natural surroundings in the land of Canaan and beyond. Among these passages is Deuteronomy 8:8, with the famous list of the seven species (wheat, barley, vines [i.e., grapes], figs, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey [extracted from dates]), and which is preceded by the verse describing Canaan as “a “good land, a land of wadis of water, springs and deeps, coming forth in the valley and in the mountain” (v. 7).
We also read the following description of the land in Deuteronomy 11:10-11, with a contrast to the physical environment of Egypt:
For the land into which you are coming to inherit it, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came forth; where you must sow your seed and water with your foot like a vegetable garden. And the land that you are entering to inherit it, it is a land of mountains and valleys; from the rain of heaven you shall drink water. A land that YHWH your God cares for; always the eyes of YHWH are on it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.
Now, from any objective standard, one would assume that Egypt, with the constant flow of the Nile River, providing for plentiful water throughout the land, would be a more desirable place for agricultural productivity. But the biblical author turns this notion on its head, because he/she realizes that the irrigation system required to bring the waters of the Nile to the sown fields takes considerable labor – unlike the land of Canaan, where the rainfall is supplied directly by God, without the involvement of human toil.
The Midwood section of Brooklyn, a largely Orthodox neighborhood known for it’s busy thoroughfare, “Avenue J,” where kosher eateries sprout like mushrooms (and where, ironically, I consumed one bite of the most disgusting mushroom pizza I’ve ever come across), is getting a culinary face lift. The newly opened Pomegranate, a 20,000 square-foot supermarket, exclusively sells kosher-certified products. The store, which houses three kitchens (dairy, meat, and parve) also features items that are not regularly found in kosher stores like organic produce, panko breadcrumbs, and fresh mozarella.
