This past shabbat I visited Tikvat Israel, the synagogue whose Tuv Ha’aretz CSA we joined at the beginning of the summer. In honor of Shabbat Hazon, the shabbat before the fast of Tisha B’Av, and to celebrate the success of the Hazon CSA, Tikvat Israel served a vegetarian shabbat lunch for its congregants and CSA members. The lunch was chock-full of delicious organic and locally grown vegetables. Farmer Pam’s produce was used in such dishes as cucumber salad, savory zucchini bread and vegetarian chili. In addition to being delicious, the lunch served as a wonderful way to connect congregants and members of the CSA.

A reminder to all who have not done so to please participate in the food poll to aid The Jewish Museum of Maryland in their research for a Jewish food exhibit!

The traveling exhibit is tentatively titled “Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture and American Jewish Identity.” The exhibit will be accompanied by a catalog and an exhibit-related website, all of which will look at a huge range of questions about Jews and food, including the type of issues that the Jew and the Carrot and Hazon are interested in.

As many of you know, and as two of our contributors mentioned in their posts Flooding Fields: An Argument Against Eating Locally? and Prayer for No Rain?, the abundance of precipitation on the northeast of the US has had a sad impact on local farmers. Our CSA was impacted by the deluge two weeks ago, so we received less produce than usual, but the following week more than compensated for it–despite an ominous, last-minute email which read: “The cherries have been compromised. Wash and eat immediately.”

Who knew local agriculture could garner so much drama? Read after the jump to hear about scapes, ramps and other vegetables with funny names.

The above photo is of flowers from the farm, special for Shavuot.

This week I went to pick up our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA box from the Tikvat Israel synagogue for the first time. The above picture is of my mother eagerly placing each food item into a recyclable bag.

This past Sunday, Capital Memorial Church, a Seventh-day Advendist church in DC, hosted its annual International Vegetarian Food Fair. For the price of $10 per person (kids under 10 get in for free), you are welcome to unlimited samples of vegetarian cuisine prepared by the church’s congregants.

The Fair started out as a dinner party prepared by members of the congregation, but it was so hugely popular they had to implement second and third seatings. Finally, it became too large for a sit-down dinner and turned into the food fair that it is today.

This is my first of a series of posts chronicling my family’s first experience with community-supported agriculture. My mother and her friend, who happens to be a nutritionist, have decided to split a CSA box every week this summer.

Now this is not your ordinary CSA, since it is actually a Tuv Ha’Aretz – one of Hazon’s Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) Project, located at Tikvat Israel, a nearby synagogue.  This means that one should not be surprised when the woman coordinating the CSA explains in her weekly email that she will not be checking her email between 8pm on Friday and 9pm on Saturday…

This week’s CSA box included asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, head lettuce, mint (which we just put in the freezer to be used in future cups of tea), spring onions, salad mix and radishes. All the vegetables arrived in such an incredibly fresh condition that my mother was worried they would go bad quickly, so she hastily used them all in one or two meals. In addition, we went to the farmer’s market in Dupont Circle for mother’s day, where we purchased baby turnips and smoked mozzarella. Check out the meals we made with these goodies after the jump!

Earlier today, a friend was kind enough to share an article with me that addressed several of my interests: cooking, charity and the Pittsburgh Jewish community. The first two have had a prominent position my entire life, and the last only came into my frame of interest when I enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh this year.

The city’s local paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, recently featured a piece about a class called “Not Your Bubbe’s Cooking…But Close!” an initiative taken by the United Jewish Federation Women. The class serves two very important functions: teaching young Jewish women to cook traditional Jewish foods, and benefiting the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry. Each class member pays an $8 fee that goes directly to the pantry, which has a budget of $235,000. Sadly, living in the city has shown me how great a homelessness problem there is in the area, and more donations and assistance in securing funds are needed.

While the class is benefiting a good cause, it is also doing the mitzvah (good deed) of passing Jewish traditions on to the next generation. “We had young women who were looking to learn traditional ways of cooking Jewish foods and, at the same time, to have a social experience and meet new people,” says Federation director Samantha Rothaus. She devised the program along with Jennifer Jones, the young adult director.

“We don’t need that!”

My Zaidie glares at my mother and puts the second of two (yes, two) containers of homemade cookies back in the cardboard box from whence they came.

This ritual is repeated over and over with a multitude of food products—salad dressings loaded with fat and sugar, packages of crackers and other highly processed foods that have no chance of finding a home here. Friends have always looked at me in shock when I explain that we have never kept junk food in the house. My mother is a former Weight Watchers group leader, my father is an endocrinologist, my siblings both need to watch their weight for health reasons, and I, the vegetarian of the family, prefer to eat healthy. So we felt no guilt in rejecting the high-caloric food products that were trespassing our threshold of health.