by
Jeff · August 21st, 2010
(x-posted from The Wet Sprocket)
A new award has been developed by the Seedling Projects in San Francisco designed to support food producers who put as much thought into how they produce their foods as they do to what they are producing. For sustainably minded, small-scale, artisanal and craft producers, this should be your thing.
According to the Seedling Projects, “Winners will receive a Good Food Awards seal to place on their product, an invitation to participate in the ceremony and marketplace tasting, and connections to a network of national buyers who seek out foods that meet the holistic Good Food Awards Criteria.”
Cross-posted to heebnvegan
Last month, the Redwood Wholefood Company, a vegan food manufacturer in Britain, issued a press release announcing “one of the first times that a UK manufacturer of vegetarian and vegan products has undergone the kosher certification process.” Celebrity animal rights advocate Heather Mills, who owns Redwood, said, “Achieving kosher certification is an endorsement of the care and attention we give to the sourcing of ingredients and to the manufacturing of our products.”
Perhaps a press release should be taken with a grain of kosher salt. While it is commendable that Redwood has reached out to clientele seeking a hechsher, kosher-certified vegan food is likely not a total anomaly in England. The press release highlights the rarity of kosher certification for companies that chiefly focus on vegetarian and vegan foods, but surely there must be a fair number of kosher foods that are vegan in the U.K. I took the below photo last year to show off the kosher section of a London supermarket, and I’m guessing that at the very least, the matzos that my friend was holding were both hechsher-bearing and vegan!
Just got back from Feast in the Field, where we were treated to a veritable feast cooked with produce from the Adamah harvest, served to us in a beautiful tent right in the field where the vegetables grew.
One Adamahnik, Rachel English, exclaimed, “I never knew our vegetables could be cooked like this!” Indeed, the roasted red pepper coulis, eggplant caponata and fatoosh-roasted garlic flatbread chicps tossed with cucumbers, tomatoes, feta and mint in a lemon-sumac citronette dressing are hardly your standard hippie stirfry. The meal also featured egg tarts, asian chopped salad with nappa cabbage, carrots and scallions, and platters of “the freshest tomatoes of the season, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and dusted with sea salt and fresh herbs.”
A new study by John Guthman, PhD, director of counseling services at Hofstra University, uncovered more severe depression among college students. In 2009, 41% of students counseled at his college were diagnosed with moderate or severe depression, compared to 34% in 1997. Fewer were suicidal, however, perhaps due to improved services or perhaps because being surrounded by other depressed people makes you feel less alone.
Future Shocked?
Dr Guthman opines that the reason more students have more severe depressive symptoms is that more of them are being diagnosed with depression before coming to college. Doesn’t that just put off the real question: Why are more kids depressed?
Wise Organic Pastures – The Poultry Farm
This Article is Cross-Posted on KosherEye.com
Now it’s on to the Farm – a 50-mile drive from the plant.
As city dwellers, we did not know what to expect at the “chicken” farm. Wise Organic Poultry contracts with farmers willing to raise chickens to its high specifications – combining humane methods, proper feed, and ample space. To visit one such farm, we traveled to a picturesque well–maintained farm, owned by a grower in the Susquehanna Valley of Central Pennsylvania.
An article in the New York Times this morning reported that a truce has been made between factory farmers and animal rights activists in Ohio. Much of the discussion is focused on caging methods for chickens.
According to the article:
Hoping to avoid a divisive November referendum that some farmers feared they would lose, Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio urged farm leaders to negotiate with opponents, led by the Humane Society of the United States. After secret negotiations, the sides agreed to bar new construction of egg farms that pack birds in cages, and to phase out the tight caging of pregnant sows within 15 years and of veal calves by 2017.
Originally posted on Food Forever – The AJWS Food Justice Blog.
The headline of Sunday’s front page New York Times article reads, “India Asks, Should Food Be a Right for the Poor?” Of course it should. The article recounts the sobering fate of India’s countless citizens who, after enduring extreme starvation and malnutrition, have fallen through the country’s social safety net.
I moved back to Brooklyn just under two months ago. Although formerly a city-dweller, three years at Adamah in the peaceful countryside of Lichtfield County had gotten me used to a few things. Quiet, for one. Also unlimited farm-fresh eggs, as orange as the sun. And the possibility that at any moment, I might have to shlep compost.
This article is cross-posted on joyofkosher.com.
Since a traditional Memphis barbecue usually consists of smoked pork served as a rack of ribs or “pulled” (hand shredded and sauce covered), it is understandable that the city’s 8,000 Jews might try to find a way to bring their five-thousand-year-old tradition of slow cooked meat to the land of the Delta blues.
Wise Organic Pastures – The Processing Plant
This Article is Cross-Posted on KosherEye.com
Our Bubbie and “grand” Bubbies may have known how to make a famous roast chicken and of course, chicken soup, but certainly did not face the same chicken challenges that the kosher shopper faces today. Most chicken is no longer raised in the back yard! The consumer is now faced with numerous choices in quality, type and price.
Chicken has become a multi-billion dollar industry in America. Kosher chicken is no exception, but is somewhat more complicated. There has been extraordinary growth in kosher poultry sales in the last few decades. Along with observant Jews, many non-Jews and Jews who don’t necessarily adhere to kosher laws now purchase kosher poultry. Why? There is a perception that kosher certification adds a layer of clarity and transparency to poultry purchases. In addition to the FDA and government regulatory agencies, the processing plant must adhere to the specifications of a supervising kosher agency and rabbinical authority. Many consumers welcome this extra layer of inspection.
“I know it’s your day, but it’s not all about you…Why have a wedding if you’re going to be like that [serve only vegetarian options]? Just print a bumper sticker.”
Did this article that concluded with this choice comment in today’s NY Times Sunday Styles section annoy others as much as it annoyed me? Of course weddings should reflect one’s values, so if you’re kosher, or vegan, or vegetarian, why wouldn’t you serve kosher, vegan, or vegetarian food? As the vegan Kathleen Mink quoted in the article said, it was a “no brainer” to have a vegan menu at her and her husband’s wedding. But another vegan pastry chef served meat at her wedding because she was afraid celebrity chefs like Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud would think she and her husband “were crazy” if they didn’t serve meat.
