Delilah is passionate about food, Judaism, and environmentalism, and an avid food blog reader. She looks forward to exploring more about where the above intersect through this blog. Delilah grows vegetables in her backyard, buys organic farmers-market produce, and washes out plastic bags for reuse all in an effort to live more lightly on the planet. When not thinking about, writing or reading about, or consuming food she manages a public health project. Previously, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, where seasonal eating took on a whole new meaning. Delilah lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and three cats.
What could be more dear to an ecologically minded keeper of kashrut in summer than a marshmallow? In San Francisco, a panel of tasters at the local daily voted the kosher brand as their top pick. Tell us in comments where to find kosher ‘mallows in your area! Has anyone tried to make one at home?
Living close to San Mateo, CA, the artichoke producing capital of the US, I am lucky. For months, the delicious, complicated, decadent vegetables have appeared faithfully at my nearby farmer’s market. I usually steam them and eat the leaves plain, or possibly dipped in butter-garlic sauce. Or, if my fiance mixes up a dipping sauce of mayo and mustard, I may dip a few in there. But mostly I just eat them plain, enjoying the complex green vegetable taste.
Then I read Out of the Kitchen Adventures of a Food Writer by Jeannette Ferrary.
Have I mentioned that I love matzoh balls? Fluffy, hard, small, big – it doesn’t matter. If it’s spherical, made of matzoh meal and floating in broth I’ll eat it. So when I saw Isa Moskowitz’ recipe for vegan matzoh balls I thought, “cool. I should try this out and then post about it on JCarrot.”
So here you go – dueling vegan Matzoh ball recipes: tofu versus flax. Yes, she has not one, but two vegan matzoh ball recipes. The flax one is new to help address the tofu/kitniot debate. (Click here for the flax recipe – you have to scroll down to the comments section).
I tackled the tofu matzoh balls first. I blended the silken tofu with broth and olive oil, then mixed that with the matzoh meal, salt and pepper. I put the whole thing into the fridge for 2 hours. Easy enough.
The garden started as a joke. When asked what activities we both enjoyed, my fiance and I just looked at each other and laughed. Gardening? Eventually the joke became an aspiration. We both liked the idea of gardening: fresh air, a tactile activity, fresh veggies at the end. So one spring weekend, we got outside to tackle the years worth of weeds growing in our small backyard. After about five minutes, I decided it was too much work. So much for gardening. Instead, as I hunched over my master’s thesis on the computer, he got out into the backyard with some hired day laborers and started pulling up weeds. Once the weeds were cleared, they mixed sand into the clay-filled soil to amend it. More bricks were brought it to complete the small brick patio dividing two sides of the yard. Finally, a trip to the garden store yielded flower bushes for the shady side and several varieties of veggie starts for the sunny side.
“Oh, there’s no blue cheese in it. We just call it blue cheese,” the diner waiter informed my mother with a perfectly straight face. It’s been a running joke in my family ever since.
