This blog is not the right place for it, but still, Roger Cohen has really gotten on my nerves over the last year or so.  His ranting about how wonderful Iran is and how great it is for the Jews there made me question my devotion to the New York Times.  His  piece “Advantage France,” in Sunday’s paper, about some of the differences between the French diet and the American diet, may have me beginning to change my mind.  I’ve only spent a few days in France, and only in Paris, but I’m guessing he’s exaggerating somewhat.  Nevertheless, the idea of Americans adopting any diet (or lifestyle, really) that required not only combining the ingredients and cooking them, but processing them to begin with (filleting the fish, making the pasta, etc) does sound beautiful and absurd.  The idea of connecting to food on a “gut” level and a geographic one far predates the terroir of which Cohen writes, at least in Jewish tradition.

Photo courtesy of Nina Barnett

My love affair with kale actually began in the winter when, desperate for a fresh vegetable I began searching for something in season.  When we began to thaw out admittedly my head was turned by the fresh younger spring vegetables, and I nearly forgot about the deep green leafy goodness I had been putting in my winter soups until one week my CSA box said “one pound baby kale.”

Um, how interesting. What does one do with baby kale? I asked the all-knowing conduit of helpful hints, recipes and if nothing else good suggestions – Google.  The search results mostly suggested I put it into salads but then came recipes for braised baby kale – which basically sounded like tossing the little guys in some olive oil then baking them.

A group of Jewish food lovers, a spread of delectable dishes, and milkshakes made of laughter. If it were possible for one afternoon to be too good, this is where it would start.

A group of Jew & the Carrot writers, editors, and friends faced the risk—overflowing goodness and all—this past Sunday. Of course, it all started with the food. I arrived at host Avigail’s Clinton Hill, Brooklyn apartment to find hand-layered ratatouille swirling from the center of a clay baking dish, crusty homemade beer bread, a cake topped with the purple velvet of baked plums, aromatic rosemary bread, peach-basil salad, and made-from-scratch yogurt. That alone nearly tipped the scales to the side of the too good. Did I mention that we washed this down with homemade sparkling ginger-grapefruit juice? Spiked with gin?

(Story excerpted from Tablet Magazine)

On the occasional Friday afternoon, a makeshift farmers market appears inside the popular soup shop Marakiya in Jerusalem’s city center. Israelis peruse the goods: dried figs, almonds, creamy labaneh, bottles of grape honey, and briny stuffed olives. It’s a familiar scene in a country known for its fresh produce and sumptuous food markets. But this souk aims to produce more than a good meal.

Behind one of the tables, Yahav Zohar, a 29-year-old tour guide and translator, chats with a customer about a bottle of organic olive oil. While his deep tan and scruffy beard might suggest otherwise, Zohar is not a farmer. Rather, he is something of an altruistic middleman—traveling once a week to the West Bank in search of growers and small-scale food producers whose products he buys and resells at a small markup. “The other day, I bought 500 eggs from a farmer at a shekel apiece,” he said. “In some cases, our purchases end up being a big share of a family’s income.”

This was published on August 14, 2009 in the Cleveland Jewish News and was written by Arlene Fine

Ariella Reback and Amalia Haas, owners of a new pastured kosher poultry business, have a lot to cluck about. Their free-range chickens, ducks and turkeys are being raised to provide healthy fare for their clientele and to eventually feather their own nests.

Two years ago, Haas, 40, a Jewish environmental educator, planted the seeds of the women’s fledgling business they named “The Green Taam.” (taam means taste in Hebrew). Intrigued with the idea of raising her own poultry, she bought 14 ducklings online, allowing them to roam freely in her fenced Beachwood backyard. They fed on grass, clover, bugs, and organic feed and had access to fresh water.

Like many other people, this summer has been full of summer squash!  It almost seems to be falling from the sky.  I have made zucchini bread (and muffins), I also made these zucchini fritters (really just a summer latke).  I just got some more zucchini and yellow squash in my CSA box and I really have no idea what to do with it.  To be honest, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I opened the box yesterday and saw more summer squash!  Our CSA gives us the ability to check online a few days prior to delivery to see what we’re going to get.  So usually by the time we get our box I feel inspired to cook with the ingredients.  I was out of town earlier this week so I didn’t have a chance to look at what was coming.  My boyfriend pulled the unwelcome squashes out of the box and asked what my plans were for them.  I told him I didn’t know and to put them away for now.  We then gave each other a look of “more summer squash?  You can’t be serious.”  As a side note, while out of town for business I had dinner with my family who was vacationing at the beach in Southern California.  My dad made zucchini stuffed with his amazing mushroom risotto (you’ve heard my talk about my dad and his risotto).  He got the zucchinis from a friend who grows them in her garden and was desperate to get rid of them.  These were literally the largest zucchinis I’d ever seen

What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.

What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of  sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?

What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?

What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.

The Fed is sending mixed messages to small farms these days. Taken separately, HR 2749 and new promises from the new Anti-trust arm of the Justice Department show two very different agricultural agendas, but both are big news, with enormous potential to either weaken or strengthen the position of small farmers nationwide.

The good news first: The Justice Department will be scrutinizing agricultural monopolies as one of its goals under Obama.  According to NPR, the Department plans to part from the usual reactionary protocol to investigate perceived monopolies instead of waiting for accusations. First on the list are seed companies,  whom the justice department believes may be interfering in competition in the corn and soy markets. This doesn’t come as a surprise to JCarrot readers, but it appears, from Phil Weiser’s speech to the Organization for Competative markets ( read the full text of his speech here), that the Justice Department’s intention is to keep companies like Monsanto from interfering with start-ups in the genetically-engineered seed business, not necesarily to keep them from persecuting farmers who don’t want to plant their seeds.

“Half a loaf,” they say, “is better than none.”  But it’s hard for me to cheer when I have half a challah left after Shabbat, doomed to sit on the counter, uneaten until it’s inedible, or tossed into the back of a freezer and forgotten until the pre-Passover clean up and then burned with the chametz.

We’ve been trying especially hard, recently, not to waste food – but when it comes to leftover challah, the challenge is twofold: For one thing, there are four people in my family and 15 slices in the average bakery loaf; you do the math. For another, halakha (Jewish law) requires that two full, un-sliced loaves appear at both the Friday night meal and again on Saturday as a reminder of the double portion of manna that fell from heaven before Shabbat when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. A lovely tradition – but it means the bread left over from supper can’t just be used up at the next day’s lunch.

That’s just one of the many reasons I bake my own challah: I can shape each loaf to the exact size I’ll actually need on a given Shabbat, depending on whether we’re expecting guests. And when I’m too tired/hot/lazy/cranky to bake, I now buy small challah rolls at the bakery, rather than full braids. Yeah, the little round breads look kind of lonely on the big challah board, but honestly, one slice of challah is really enough for each of us.

But even those anti-waste measures aren’t fail-safe – and there are many folks, I know, for whom it just isn’t Shabbos dinner without large, glossy loaves poking their noses out from under a silken challah cover. For all of us, then, I’ve been thinking about delicious ways to use up leftover challah.

Hot-smoked salmon bathed

in new onions, farmers’ eggs

cry for bliss, o pan.

Whenever I return to New York for a visit, I make a pilgrimage to Barney Greengrass for lox, eggs and onions (with a toasted everything bagel and a small borscht, baby). Walter, my famed fishmonger at Pure Fish at the Pike Place Market, sweetly gave me a birthday package of hot-smoked salmon this week. As soon as I got it home, I knew what I was going to do with it.

I had new red onions in the fridge from my Hazon CSA box and unbelievably orange and delicious eggs from the Crown-S-Ranch from which I’m sure I’ll never recover. Oh, to be an egg snob! Lordy, Lordy.

Photo by Paul Lowry

So we all know that eating together is as much a social lubricant as anything else.  And without too much of a stretch we can turn cooking into a social affair.  And thanks to the Food Network, we even get our high definition voyeuristic fill of “food porn.”  But can all these mediums be massed up, and if they are would it be any good?

Yesterday, my friend and author Max Gross invited a few folks to join him for the first night of the reality show Top Chef – a show favored by other Jew and the Carrot readers and writers.  Will this season highlight any important food issues like the short-lived Chopping Block brought up sustainable fish or how Iron Chef America took on kosher cuisine in one of its episodes?  We don’t know yet what this season will bring, but from his account below he did get some folks together to not only eat, but to (try and) watch some reality TV food porn together.  According to Max,

The New month of Elul begins this weekend. This is a month for forgiveness and taking responsibility for our own actions. This is the last month of the spiritual year. It is time take to action to become whole and pure to prepare for Rosh Hashanah, which is the next new moon.

Traditionally, every morning this month, we blow the Shofar (the ram’s horn) as a call to remind us to turn inwards and wake up to the true divine self that is always within.

As nature begins the dance of downward movement giving back to the earth, we can learn how to loosen our grip on what no longer serves and let it go as we expand into new ways of being with ourselves and in our relationships….

Sure, that sounds nice… and it’s easier said than done.

If my summer were a cookbook, it would be called What to Expect When You’re Expecting— Expecting Company, That Is, and It’s a Heat Wave.

Yes, welcome to life in the global warming oven.  We are on at least heat wave #3 of the summer here in usually temperate Portland, and I’ve had a potluck to attend or guests to host for all of them.  And while the hot weather makes me want to eat ice cream three meals a day, I know I really shouldn’t.

Especially not when “eating” means “bringing to a potluck where it will sit out in the sun.”

So what has been on the menu?  Lots, and I figured I’d share it in case you can’t stand the heat but still need to be in the kitchen.

(reprinted from The Forward)

The other night I had eggs for dinner. Two of them fried over easy, slipped onto a slice of toast and plopped next to some sautéed zucchini with garlic. My total cooking time clocked in somewhere around 12 minutes — about as much energy as I had on a muggy summer evening after a day spent prostrating myself in front of a laptop. There was nothing gourmet about what I ate, except perhaps the pinch of za’atar that I sprinkled over the eggs en route to the table. But according to a recent New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan (author of “In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), my dinner practically qualified for a James Beard award, the food world’s most prestigious prize.

Why? Because, as unfussy as my meal was, I cooked it. From scratch.