If Peeps were made with kosher marshmallows, could this become an acceptable alternative to the traditional Hillel sandwich? You decide! Chag sameach.

If you didn’t know, this past week featured World Water Day. A brief internet search can tell you more about this, but the general idea is for people to focus on water consumption and stress the importance of water conservation. Last summer, when I was wwoofing in Israel, water conservation was at the forefront of everyone’s minds. It only rains in the winter there, and farming in the summer meant that water had to be very seriously considered in its allotment. Luckily, farmers utilize gray water and drip irrigation methods to maximize water usage.

However, for those of us who do not live in the Middle East or on a farm, usually we are pretty unconcerned with our water usage. We shower everyday, run dishwashers, run laundry machines, brush our teeth and leave the water running (I never understood this one) and other daily mundane activities that consume our fresh water supply. In NYC, our fresh water is being threatened by drilling for natural gas near the reservoirs upstate, where our tap water comes from. The danger of losing our tap water is one of the most serious issues facing the future of the city.

“Seder” is Hebrew for “order.”  In my playgroup last week we tried to recreate the order in this three-thousand-year-old carefully choreographed ritual (the Passover seder) while exploring the symbolic seder foods.

The children made seder plates. They got large biodegradable bamboo plates, onto which they glued round cardboard prototypes, with six blank circles for the six seder plate foods.  Onto those blanks they stuck stickers representing the egg, lamb shank (we subbed yam), parsley, romaine lettuce, charoset and horseradish.

Every year come Passover there is the great dessert dilemma. Do I try to fake the cake using matzo meal, or forgo carbs and make meringues?  A few years back I put out fruit with a dark chocolate fondue, but you can really pull that rabbit out of the hat just once.  Invariably, I would pause on almonds, which are delicious, protein filled, fragrant, and fraught with biblical meaning.  Many scholars believe that Moses’ rod was an almond branch, as was Aaron’s.  It is also believed by some that the staff of the messiah will be an almond branch.

So you promised your boss you would go to work 1/2 day Monday, but you haven’t finished your shopping for the big night.  It’s Chicago.  It’s winter.  OK technically it’s Spring, but we’re all still wearing parkas and fantasizing about the sun returning.  And most importantly, the farmers’ market season in Chicago doesn’t really being until April.

Or does it?

A little-known gem is thriving right under your L stop in downtown Chicago!  Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand, located at 66 E. Randolph Street, is practically under the Randolph/Wabash stop, across from the Millenium Metra Train station, and open 6 days a week ALL YEAR.

…during the winter

…on a day other than Saturday

Those of us organic, sustainable foodies in Chicago are keenly aware of the famous Green City Market which stays open year-round by moving into the Nature Museum November-April.  But for us who observe Shabbat, the Saturday-only schedule they keep in the in winter months is sad news indeed.

So I finally kvetched – kvweeted? – to all the Chicago farmers market Tweeps I follow about how Jews are blocked from farmers market goodness in the winter.

(Originally published at The Forward)

One day last spring, at 11 minutes to midnight, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. My jeans were streaked with dirt and my hands covered with those chalky, yellow rubber gloves that scream, “I’m in serious cleaning mode, people!” There was something soothing about the rhythm of plunging my sponge into the bucket of sudsy water and attacking the grimy tile. And heaven knows, I needed some soothing; I was waist-deep into preparing my kitchen for Passover for the first time, and I was terrified.

As a home cook who had done my share of scrubbing beet juice from the grooves of cutting boards, and coaxed stubborn islands of cheese from the bottom of lasagna pans, I admittedly should not have been so intimidated by a little cleaning. But getting ready for Passover felt like serious business. On top of the usual kitchen cleaning, every last crumb of bread, which is forbidden during the weeklong holiday, needed to be accounted for. If a rebellious Kashi flake fell through the cracks, my home would be unfit for the celebration. To crib from the Hebrew National hotdog packages, Passover cleaners “answer to a higher authority.”

Zachary Agopian is a chef in Portland, OR and an intern working with an exciting project called Food-Hub: food-hub.org/. This project promotes the use of local foods by directly connecting local farmers and ranchers with local buyers. Thanks, Zachary, for sharing this project with us!

If you’re like me you’re always on the prowl for the freshest ingredients to nourish your body. Now, this may involve an assortment of ridiculous activities; from a full inspection of your milk aisle for the freshest carton, or the heated family “discussion” over your highly guarded mushroom foraging stash. My personal favorite, over-dosing on peaches until you can’t stand the sight of one until next summer, as to not give-in to the temptation, in the long winter months, of a well traveled piece of fruit.

Thanks so much to Justin Goldstein for sharing with us his post from Jewschool. Justin is a rabbinical student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University and a regular contributor at Jewschool.com.  He lives with his wife in Los Angeles and is active and interested in issues of food and economic justice, is an at-home amateur organic vegetarian chef, a farmer’s market enthusiast and a vocal advocate and all-around cheerleader for the work which Hazon does in the world.

For many American Jews, the Passover seder is an intimate and annual Jewish experience that is possibly the only time of year they will have such an experience. Not just Jews, but even many non-Jews in America enjoy participating in a Passover seder. There is something unique about the Passover seder which forces us to contemplate our role and status in society, our historical memory and our diet. Whether one observes the laws of dietary restrictions for the full 7 or 8 days of the festival, or if one simply partakes in the unique cuisine, one cannot help but reflect on our typical diets in the face of the temporary changes.

In our contemporary society we have the freedom to visit supermarkets and specialized stores and purchase food from around the world irrelevant of the season or distance. And yet, at the Passover seder, we are forced to recall what it means to hastily prepare simple loaves transported on back. We recognize, in a certain regard, between the stark difference of experiencing food in servitude and experiencing food in freedom. And while we have the freedom to buy and eat what we want, for a series of reasons we in the 21st century have less freedom and awareness in choosing or understanding how our food is produced and what type of story our food has from farm to table.

Susan Bodnar, the Lead Coordinator at BJ Hazorim, a new CSA at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue on the Upper West Side started a series on the progress of the CSA on the “The City Greens” Blog. Check it out here.

I don’t watch a lot of Food Network. I like cooking, but I really don’t watch much TV anymore, and when I do, I want to see people fighting and then making out, not stirring things. The point is, I don’t watch the Food Network, but I once saw about 15 minutes of Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee and it pretty much made me lose all hope in humanity. She was all, “Buy a cake! Spread insane amounts of icing on it! Your kids will love it!” I’m sorry, but do we need a show to tell us that? No, we don’t.

Check out this new special Ride Edition Podcast! If you haven’t heard, Hazon is allocating funds raised from the Bay Area Ride a bit differently than past rides. It’s pretty exciting and really putting the power in the hands (or cycles) of Ride participants, who will get to decide where to allocate the funds they raise.
Also, if you didn’t hear about last year’s NY Ride engagement story, Marc tells us what he was thinking the day he proposed on the Ride.

Check it all out by clicking here!

Here’s a little foray from recipes and cookie cutters: Jo Ellen Kaiser, editor in chief of Zeek Magazine, covered the burgeoning Jewish social justice sector for Sojourner’s Magazine, a liberal Christian mag. In it, she cites Hazon as an example of how the Jewish social justice movement has shunned the organized Jewish world. Over at Jewschool.com, they’re discussing whether that’s true or not.

Jo Ellen, who is a good colleague of mine who I respect greatly, portrays us oddly:

Bobbi Rubinstein is a publicist, journalist and green activist.  She’s chair of the Valley Beth Shalom Green Team and co-founder of Netiya: The Los Angeles Jewish Coalition on Food and Environmental Justice Issues

Tonight at 7pm Pacific Time, Angelenos will ask a fifth question:  Why on this night are millions of people going hungry?

With 1 in every 8 Angelenos experiencing food insecurity and 1 in 10 Angelenos using a food bank in 2009, Los Angeles is now known as the “hunger capital” of the United States.