So a Reuters reporter emailed me last week. She had seen my Jew & the Carrot post “Could I play for the other team?” in which I mused about whether I could go back to eating meat after almost 20 years of being a pescatarian. She asked whether she could interview me for a story she was writing about “Compassionate Carnivores,” and vegetarians who are thinking about eating meat once again because of the more humane methods now being used in farming.

She interviewed Mollie Katzen, of Moosewood cookbook and restaurant fame. She interviewed Isa Chandra Moskowitz, TV personality, vegan punk rock spokeswoman and cookbook author. And she interviewed me. What’s more, I’m the first to be quoted in the article, and she gave me equal time with these two food world luminaries.

Katzen and Moskowitz are food personalities. While those who know me certainly would say I have a personality too – and even a strong one at that – I am not even a blip on the foodie radar screen. I certainly don’t have a cookbook or TV show to my name. I am just a journalist-turned natural foods chef who is still trying to get my business up and running. I am truly honored to be in such great company.

Read more »

I read the other day that consumption of fresh mozzarella vastly goes up when it’s tomato season. OK, guilty. Who can resist that all-time summer favorite combo, with fresh basil?

But our Jewish Film Festival caused me to think about a long forgotten dish that is especially good for tomato season. In a scene from the Israeli film, “Aviva, My Love,” that I just saw last weekend, the main character, Aviva, was at her professor’s house. He apologized he had nothing in the fridge. She looked inside, and found eggs and a handful of tomatoes (I guess no one told those Israelis that tomatoes aren’t supposed to be refrigerated.) In the next scene, the professor is chowing down on shakshuka.

Shakshuka’s origins are up for debate. I always thought it was Yemenite, but some argue that it’s Ashkenazi in origin. And how you make it is up for debate, too. All I know is that on my third trip to Israel, when I arrived tired and hungry from over 20 hours in transit, my Israeli aunt made me this dish. I had never had it before, but I never forgot it. It was some of the best eggs I had ever had. Call it Israeli comfort food. Read more »

Last week, our Berkeley Tuv Ha’Aretz held a zucchini recipe contest. Since joining Tuv Ha’Aretz, we’ve received zucchini every week. Not only did we have fun, but we got some coverage in our local Jewish newspaper (it helps that a Tuv Ha’Aretz volunteer, myself, used to work for the paper.) Anyhow, here’s the article, or you can read it at jweekly.com

Food boxes ‘good for the land’ and good for Jews
by alexandra j. wall
correspondent

Bulgarian frittata with zucchini, feta and dill; dill zucchini pancakes with mint; zucchini in yogurt; zucchini sauté.

Read more »

I haven’t had a bite of meat in almost 20 years. I didn’t set out to become a vegetarian, but in college, it was just so easy to be one. I lived with one, and very slowly, I stopped eating it. I remember once I opened the freezer and saw a package of turkey breasts I had bought months ago. At that point, I already hadn’t eaten meat in several months or more. I knew I wouldn’t cook them, and threw them out. That was that, though I did begin eating fish a few years later. So I’ve now been a pescatarian for about 15 years. But lately, I’ve been having second thoughts.

Read more »

Yesterday’s SF Chronicle had an in-depth look at Bay Areans leading Farm Bill reform. While Michael Pollan is a mere mention, I was struck by this photo of him, as he looks positively guru-like, sitting in some kind of Garden of Eden (that mind you, looks a little too green to be in California at this time of year, even though tonight it rained in July, which never happens.) The article can be found here.

I write these words on Friday afternoon. I have just finished braiding the challah that we will eat in a few hours, and it is now under a dish towel, for its final rise. I love the feel of the dough in my hands, and the ritual of braiding, feeling the tradition in between my fingers, knowing that millions of other Jewish women have done this very same thing Friday afternoons for forever. I love the way the doughy aroma fills the house — it smells like Shabbos. But I can’t help but feel the tiniest bit guilty because of my secret: the bread machine.
Read more »

Tokyo turnips.
Those are the two words that come to mind when asked how I am enjoying my new CSA membership as part of Tuv Ha’Aretz here in the Bay Area.
I have to admit, turnips have never been high on my list of favorite vegetables. While I certainly don’t harbor any negative feelings toward them, they just don’t usually find their way into my grocery cart, even though I kinda like their dirty white peel, with that lovely purple splotch at the bottom.
Read more »

You love to cook. You love to eat even more. You think about food all the time, and you need something to channel all this food-loving frenzy into so you start a blog (not so hard to imagine, huh?)

You are a computer engineer by day, but when not at work, you are either cooking or eating or writing about it for your blog.
You invent recipes. You test them again and again, and finally, when they come out to your liking, you take mouth-watering photos of them.
At first, you are among a small community of such people. But that community and your readership grows. Your passion for what you do really shows through, and more and more people begin to discover you. Finally, you are so popular that you get a book deal, and quit your day job. You become a food writer (and photographer) full-time. You are only 27 years old.

Read more »

My career as a personal chef has barely begun and I’ve already lost my first client.

I started cooking for Rachel* in October. I saw her at a party during Sukkot, where I met her baby daughter for the first time. Rachel was one of those people who I didn’t know very well, but I always liked to run into. We began catching up, her telling me a bit about her being a single mom, and I told her about my career change. Before I could finish talking about what it was precisely I was doing, she blurted out “Would you cook for me now?”

I wasn’t really ready to do it professionally yet, but I said sure. I was in class three days a week, and figured I could use someone to practice on, and make a little money at the same time. Little is the operative word there. I felt funny charging regular personal chef rates, since I wasn’t done with school. I also liked that I had room for error, if it wasn’t that good.
Read more »

“Animal Dreams” still ranks up there among my favorite novels, and I have read everything Barbara Kingsolver has written since (I think). So I was very excited to learn that her latest book was about an issue that has become so important to me.

Last night, she was in Berkeley on her book tour, but this reading was a benefit for both the Edible Schoolyard and the Ecology Center’s Farmers Markets. It didn’t get quite the same showing as the Michael Pollan-John Mackey debate, but considering tickets weren’t free, there were several hundred people. The church where I have attended High Holiday services for the past years was pretty close to full.

Kingsolver was accompanied by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, who has contributed to the book, but last night, he worked the computer slide show. Since her book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is about her family’s attempt to eat only local food for an entire year, growing and raising most of it themselves on a farm in Virginia, we saw numerous slides of their garden – and what a garden it was.

Read more »

I just finished reading this article in today’s Chronicle, and immediately had to post it. What a great idea to get urban kids interested not only in sustainable agriculture, but how they should be feeding themselves. Check it out.

The month of May is a particularly hard one for me. It was at this time five years ago that my mother was in the last month of her life. The cancer that she had fought off twice before successfully, returned in August 2001 for the third and final time. Between the cancer’s recurrence and 9/11, which happened a few weeks later, I remember feeling like my whole world had changed.
By December, her doctors told us it was terminal, and she died on May 25, 2002 — Friday night of the start of Memorial Day Weekend that year.
Read more »

[Warning: although this post is about the topic at hand, it takes a little longer than usual to get there…]
I don’t know how I became such an Indophile, all I know it is that it happened. It probably was around the time I returned from my first trip to India, and realized how dull everything looked. I missed the women wearing magenta and gold, or turquoise and orange, not to mention the jewels between their eyebrows. It seemed like I had been wearing Technicolor-colored glasses, and then all of a sudden, everyone around me had faded into shades of grey, brown and black.
My love of all things Indian caused me to seek out an Indian-style wedding dress, and get henna on my hands and feet for my wedding day. The fact that Paulie, my husband, chose to wear an Indian suit as well meant that the studio that printed my wedding album called my photographer just out of curiosity to ask her whether ours was a Hindu or Jewish wedding.

I mention all of this because last week, I had a cooking date with Swati, the amazingly talented woman who designed my wedding dress www.swati.us/wedding3.html. (The peach one at the bottom of this web page is my actual dress, if anyone cares about such silly things)…She lives in the South Bay, about an hour from me, and like so many wonderful things in my life, I found her online (I met my husband online, too). She designs the gowns from her home here, and then has a team of people embroidering and sewing to her specifications in Bombay. I know, I know, I hardly went local for a wedding dress.

Read more »

One thing I used to hate about the Bay Area is how its population is so smug in its assuredness that we live in the best place in the world.
I don’t hate that about it anymore, I’ve just accepted that it’s true. Things happen all the time that make me so grateful that I live here (and more than that, that I am able to afford to), but recently there were two – and both of them pertain to this blog.
While I can’t claim a San Francisco residency, I am proud that recently, my neighboring city supervisors voted to ban plastic shopping bags from major grocery chains in the next six months. Of course this made us a laughing stock in other parts of the country, as if the city supervisors don’t have anything more pressing to do than this. But I think it sets an excellent example of raising awareness.
Read more »