Cecily Marbach Oberstein , Associate Editor for The Jew and the Carrot, is an avid vegetarian and interested in how and where things have come from and how and where things are going. She is a co-founder of her synagogue’s CSA and composes facts about the environment that are regularly printed in her shul bulletin. Cecily is on the Board of her local library where she writes their riveting newsletter and assists in book sales and green programming. Cecily lives in Bala Cynwyd, PA with her husband and three outstanding children and was among the few lucky people to have participated in the first ever Hazon Cross-Country Bike Ride.
Chanukah in Israel is truly something to behold. The words Chanukah
Sameach or Happy Chanukah can be found printed on food packages, store
windows, and even in pixilated letters on the front of buses. There is
generally a happy festive air about but it is the sufganiyah or the
jelly doughnut that really makes it worth being in this country on
this holiday.
I took an excursion this week to the Mahane Yehuda outdoor market in Jerusalem to get a taste of the space days before a major Jewish holiday. Below you will find a sampling of pictures from this trip. Perhaps for some of you it will be something of a trip down memory lane. For those who have never been there, these pictures do not do it justice.
Shana Tova,
Cecily
About three weeks ago I became a tourist in Jerusalem. My family packed up our home in the States, stuffed things in storage, and after one stop-over found ourselves in Ben Gurion Airport. The shiny polished floors of the airport were soon a dim memory as we tried to trespass the littered streets of Jerusalem in the oppressive heat. I kept trying to think up reasons for why the Holy Land seemed dirtier then mid-town Manhattan but those justifications didn’t lift my spirits. It was only when my young children began pointing out the pomegranate trees that were also littered all around my neighborhood that I began to feel a bit better. They are beautiful trees with small green leaves and winding branches. The pomegranates seem like such an obvious object to inspire art, literature, and cooking and not surprisingly, they have done so for centuries.
The pomegranates weren’t the only eatables that got me through the high temperatures, long lines, and jet lag. Pretty much anything wrapped in puff pastry or stuffed in a pita seemed to do the trick.
If you are kosher, carnivorous, and love barbecue contests then the first ever Hava NaGrilla Kosher BBQ Contest & Festival in Willow Grove, PA might just be the place for you this Sunday, June 7th. While I would never be caught alive at a BBQ celebration let’s hand it to them for two things: the title made me chuckle and the itinerary. The event lasts from 10 am until 3 pm and they have separate judging times for: beans, chicken, ribs, and brisket along with a kosher pickle contest to boot. And, in order to participate in the contest you would have had to register a month in advance along with your team of BBQ experts and come up with a plan and a team name.
Ask not what your CSA can do for you but what you can do for your CSA… OK maybe that doesn’t quite work. However, lately I have been thinking somewhere along those lines. This week marks the second annual start of the spring/summer season of my community’s CSA in a suburb of Philadelphia. We knew approximately what time the trucks from rural PA were due in but they still hadn’t come an hour past their scheduled drop-off time. I’d helped unload the trucks in the past, but there was something awesome about the season beginning again. I was restless and excited. I’d marked the date on my calendar weeks before. Turned out that dismissal from my kid’s school came before the truck and I packed my toddler and camera up and got into the minivan to repeat a trip I do more often then I’d like.
I don’t know if any of you lie in wait for your CSA trucks or if I stand alone but it got me wondering what was all that exciting? Was it the veggies themselves or something else? I can honestly say it must be more than the actual delight of staring at the produce—which is beautiful. (Last year my squashes and carrots often acted first as centerpieces before transitioning to table food.) Perhaps it is my artificial connection with the land that is so wonderful. The farmers are a conduit for me, my liaison to the lands. Or maybe it has to do with community. Am I getting a side order of community with my heaping share for the week? Sometimes I’d like to think so…
Advice, Agriprocessors, Family & Kids, Hazon, Kosher, Meat, Personal Story, Shabbat Meals, Vegetarian
I am in a mixed marriage. I am vegetarian and my husband and children are not. If only I could have a plain old vegetarian kitchen life would be so good. I could give away my fleishig things and have tons more space and much less confusion in the kitchen, not to mention I’d never have to wash another fatty greasy dish again. I abhor buying and cooking meat and the times when I am alone cleaning up in the kitchen I view the mess like it is insult to injury. You are probably thinking why is she doing it? My plain answer is out of love for my family.
How could that be? Well, when Shabbat rolls around chicken is what my hard working husband wants to eat. For years I declined buying or cooking meat and then I was worn down when family and guests would grace our table and I would feel that sadly they preferred and were more satisfied when there were animals on the table.
Last spring part of my front lawn was dug up. We had had pools of water in our basement for some time and then one evening it became full out flooding. After some trouble-shooting we found out that the pipe that brings water to our home from under the street had cracked.
Workers came and replaced the pipes and I was left with a muddy and spotty lawn. I went out and bought two things: grass seed and sunflower seeds. Something about the tilled earth signaled to me that I might as well stick in some seeds since it would cost me very little effort. My girls and I crudely and inaccurately stuck them in, some too closely together and others too widely apart. But as is the miracle of life somehow or other they grew.
Happy Yom Ha’Atzmaut! Thanks to your comments on my St. Patrick’s Day post I decided to set a challenge for myself. To try and recreate the blue icing cupcakes of my youth with natural food dye. You must understand that I do not have an extensive test kitchen and loads of time and energy so I tried one option… extracting blue coloring from blueberry jam.
I must say I think I failed miserably and so I created a tried and true second batch using good o’l fashioned food coloring. The test will be completed tonight when I see which platter is done first. I’ll let you know.
A person’s body is much like a garden. I do not write this as an ode to a Shakespearean sonnet rather, I mean it in a literal way. Both a person and a plant need water, sunlight, and food to prosper and grow. Other elements are key for a thriving individual or plant such as regular care, companionship, and diversity. What do I mean by diversity and companionship? Read on and you will see…
Recently the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled Feeding the Bacteria in Your Gut. The article talks about prebiotics and how they are being added to our drinks, cheeses, cereals, yogurts and breads. Prebiotics are different from the now ubiquitous probiotics which have graced our dairy shelves for some time in yogurts and diet snacks. Probiotics are dietary supplements of live bacteria or yeasts thought to be healthy for the host organism (you). In other words, probiotics are added to food to help increase the good bacteria found in our bodies and help us better digest our food.
Being vegan made me feel focused, healthy, and proactive. That is except during Passover. I was neither focused nor relaxed on this holiday because I was hungry a lot of the time. Preparation is key for those of you who are about to celebrate the coming holiday and plan not to eat any animals or animal bi-products. On a normal day as a vegan I nourished myself with bean spreads, peanut butter, and an array of soy products. These are excellent everyday foods but all of these things include kitniyot which is a category of food not consumed by most Ashkenazi Jews during Passover. It is commonly understood that the avoidance of kitniyot is a stringency we place on ourselves to better shield us from mistakenly bringing home chametz. Examples of common kitniyot items are corn, rice, peas, beans and peanuts—i.e. major sources of protein for vegans. These foods have the potential to be ground up and made into a substance resembling flour.
My (lovely) mother is a proper woman. It was a rare meal when we were allowed to place a food container directly on the table. For the most part we would decant the mustard or horseradish into a small bowl and take from that. In many areas I have followed in my mom’s footsteps, I too do not like putting cereal boxes and drink cartons on the table but that is because it bothers my aesthetic senses (i.e. they get in the way when they clutter a small kitchen table) and I want to shield my children against obnoxious marketing and advertising. Yet, unlike my mom I have had to cut corners and fallen a couple of rungs on the proper-ness ladder. By child number two, I stopped making my own tomato sauce and with child number three the days of homemade pie crusts were over.
A few months ago, the Times had an article that my mom cut out and sent to me about money saving measures one could take in the kitchen. I didn’t find it all that earth shattering but one thing it said was that sticking a few soup veggies in a pot is always better then store bought consomme. I love to cook but I also need time saving measures. Osem’s soup mixes, which can be found in most kosher food sections, are tasty and can offer that je ne sais quoi to rice dishes, cholents, and of course soups. In the past year Osem came out with a new chicken consomme that boasts all natural ingredients. Perhaps this new version can help us save time in the kitchen and will offer a healthier alternative to the original. Let’s see:
post dedicated to Ezra Marbach
When I think of March 17th I think of green. Not olive green, celadon, pine or lime — I’m talking clover. On St. Patrick’s Day in the US you can find things such as bagels, pastries, beer, and flowers dyed clover green in celebration of this day. It’s meant as a shout out to Irish American solidarity and pride much like the blue coloring used on cupcakes is for the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. (I just had to bring up those blue cupcakes, regrettably they hold a special place in my culinary heart.) With all of these thoughts on green and blue I thought I’d explore the connection between food and color.
In Oliver Sacks’s novel An Anthropologist on Mars he includes a chapter called The Case of the Colorblind Painter. This chapter tells the story of an adult artist who became color blind as a result of an auto accident. One of the ailments that the man suffers from, as a result of the accident, is a repulsion toward many foods and eating. The book states, “He founds foods disgusting due to their grayish, dead appearance and had to close his eyes to eat.” The book goes on to say that closing his eyes and imagining the food’s proper color didn’t help enough and he began eating foods like rice and black olives that appeared more normal with his impaired color palette.
If you are looking to build a “green” home or are hoping to find organic cosmetics then the Go Green Expo might be the place for you this weekend in Philadelphia. This Expo is billed as a trade show for people who want to learn about environmentally friendly goods and services for use in modern everyday living. Apparently the idea for the Expo came from one of the organizers, a professional trade show producer, after he watched the film An Inconvenient Truth. Sweet, eh?
Thank you! Was it you who tipped off the organizers of the 2nd annual Philly Beer Week that they should have it on Purim? What a great idea to have such a dynamic festival in Philadelphia, possibly reminiscent of many a Persian banquet of yore, at this exact time of year. Well whoever it was that pulled off this heist must be from Philly but for those of you peons who don’t know… Philly is quite the beer town. It is worth a look see and a draft.
From March 6 through the 15th the City of Brotherly Love is expecting around 30,000 revelers to participate in over 670 events in the general area. The events range from numerous “meet the brewer” opportunities to tastings, classes, beer bus tours, and beer brunches, dinners and lunches. But that’s not all, move over Hazon, the organizers have even planned a 60-mile brewery bike ride where riders get to dismount at breweries, have a drink and then ride at a leisurely pace before dismounting at the next joint. Now how does that compare to your last ride?
