Between luscious bites of pomegranate or dutiful bites of carob, why not surf over to hoarded ordinaries, who are hosting this month’s festival of the trees -

“a monthly blog carnival for all things arboreal. Like other blog carnivals, the Festival of the Trees is a collection of links to blog posts and other spots on the web, hosted each month at a different blog.”

I still remember the first time my suburban food-bubble was burst, when I realized the implications of fruit sold according to season. I was in Israel, and became completely dumbfounded when I couldn’t find the strawberries…”whaddya mean you don’t sell them in the winter?!?”

Of course, as my sister recently reminded me, even junk food lovers know the comforting seasonal rhythms of Cadbury Creme eggs in late winter (they’re only sold from Jan 1-Easter Sunday), Peeps in the spring, and, of course, Mallomars in the late fall.

Ah, Mallomars…If Proust had grown up in New York, he would have traded in his madeleine for a Mallomar. Respectable journalists have sung its praises to the heavens, this perfect confection, only available during the dark, baseball-less months of November through March, so delicate is its thin outer layer of chocolate, that it can’t survive the trip from factory to store in the heat of spring or summer. And what could be more Jewish than a cookie that comes eighteen to a box, 70% of which are consumed by New Yorkers?

The only cookie that comes close is its Israeli cousin, the Krembo. Similar in construction and seasonal availability, writers also wax rhapsodic about krembo season. Plus, according to its wikipedia entry: Read more »

Last year, my Tu Bishvat wrap-up post dealt with the question of the mysterious end to the Tu Bishvat seder. After eating foods that are edible on the inside, then outside, then all the way through, the final section of the Tu Bishvat seder has us eating nothing at all. In explanation, I offered this quote from Maggid of Mezritch, the Chasidic master Dov Baer:

““Nothing in the world can change from one reality into another, unless it first turns into nothing, that is, into the reality of the between-stage. The moment when the egg is no more and the chick is not yet, is the level of Ayin, nothingness. It is the same with the sprouting seed. It does not begin to sprout until the seed disintegrates in the earth and the quality of seed-dom is destroyed in order that it may attain to nothingness which is the rung before creation.”

The reason there is no fruit at the end of the seder is because it exists only in the future - after we pick up where the seder left off and plant the seeds of tikkun olam in our community, and in our lives. To tangibly represent this point, this year we’re printing the last page of our seder on this paper. It contains actual wildflower seeds that will really grow if this page is planted in the ground following the seder! May all our work towards a sustainable world come to fruition this year.

As a card-carrying Jewish professional, I have the maddening responsibility of thinking two holidays ahead at all times. So while I am trying to put the finishing touches on our second annual (Fair Trade) Chocolate-Covered Tu Bishvat Seder, I’m also looking for a more sustainable vendor for the hot dogs for our Purim carnival. I can’t believe that after several years of serious progress (especially on the krunchy-kosher koasts), no one is selling a kosher organic hot dog yet. Even with some serious google-fu, this is the best I could come up with. Kosher organic chicken dogs. Blech. Maybe we’ll just go with these.

Any thoughts?

So maybe they did stop their covert nuclear activities almost five years ago, but now there’s a chance that we’re supporting the axis-of-evil with our choice of snack:

World Briefing | Middle East
Israel: The Hunt for Illegal Nuts

Published: November 22, 2007

Israel has asked the United States for help in cracking down on illegal pistachio nut imports from Iran, an official said, after Washington warned that the trade was hurting efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel imports pistachios worth $26 million annually, mostly from Turkey. But Washington says nuts from Iran are mixed in with the shipments, undermining economic sanctions meant to force Iran to stop developing its nuclear abilities. An Agriculture Ministry official said Israel was willing to help but, as in the past, the problem was how to figure out the nuts’ origin.

A much more adversarial description of this exchange can be found here.

Fear not, gentle readers - if you want your eating to contribute to peace, love, and understanding, enter the Build a Sustainable Gingerbread House competition over at Bake for Change.

And about those pistachios…maybe we should just start a nougat for nukes exchange program .

Latkes a little too Eastern European? Not sephardic enough for sufganiyot? Here are some more American ways to celebrate the miracle of the oil, courtesy of our synagogue teen group’s yearly Fry-Fest^(tm):

• Fried Oreos - These are amazing. The cookies become warm chocolate cake, and the middle turns into an internal glaze, all surrounded by fried dough. Take that, jelly donut!
• Fried Snickers Bars - known in England as Fried Mars Bars (what they call Snickers across the pond), these were OK, but a bit too goey for my taste. But hey, fried candy can’t be a total waste…This site also references another classic:
• Fried Twinkies - now we’re getting somewhere!
• For a savory treat, you can try a southern favorite, fried pickles - they’ve got to be better than these.
• And why not wash it all down with the newest state fair sensation…Fried Coca-Cola!! We’re trying this one tonight, and I’ll report back with results. You can find cola syrup as a digestive aid in many pharmacies.

Read more »

Does it pay to read blogs? Maybe if I hadn’t checked a few of my favorites this morning (metafilter.com, jewlicious.com, nextbook.org), I wouldn’t have come across these bewildering, highly amusing and slightly nauseating headlines:

• A talmudic analysis of a soccer player’s lament, as it relates to restraints made of kreplach
• An FBI plan to track Iranian terrorists in California based on monitoring spikes in falafel sales
• White Castle’s 2007 Recipe contest winner? Slider Latkes (only slightly less gross than last year’s winner -I think I’m gonna be sick)

OK, back to work, people. (Image via Jewlicious)

It’s a familiar legend - whether it’s the Golem or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (the latter perhaps inspired by tales of the former) - what we arrogantly create comes back to haunt us. America’s monster might turn out to be one that we encounter in its most powerful form each Halloween: corn. Not the sweet, buttery kind that we get from our CSA in July. The kind that industrial-strength petro-chemicals and lobbyist-induced grain subsidies have produced in quantities unfathomable even fifty years ago. As Michael Pollan noted in Omnivore’s dilemma, which so eloquently sounded the clarion call for the dangers of corn, much of this crop has been turned into food additives that are so commonplace that if we’re eating any type of processed food, chances are we’re eating corn, even if we don’t even know it! Read more »

Organic. Pancakes. In a can.

End of civilization? Or dawn of a new era of enlightened convenience foods?

Discuss.

You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops…It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Although these words by the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former Major League Baseball commissioner and poet describe perfectly how I feel this week as a disgusted Mets fan, they could also, like the scroll of Kohelet, describe the bittersweet reality of Sukkot. We celebrate the harvest, even as the falling leaves remind us that soon winter will be here. Of course, the sukkah is the most obvious symbol of impermanence connected with this fall holiday. But the etrog offers its own lessons as well.

My most vivid Jewish memory as a child was kiddush in our synagogue sukkah. Our elderly rabbi would show us his etrog, and implore us to marvel at its luxuriant, citrusy ripeness. Then he took a dry, brown oval out of his pocket, which he revealed was last year’s model. Then he produced a third etrog - this one from five years earlier - a dark caramel brown sphere. Finally, he displayed an etrog from twenty years ago - a pitch-black, shriveled hunk. As he dexterously held all four between his fingers, it was like catching a glimpse of eternity: Each etrog would soon become the next one, and so on down the line - and there between his wrinkled fingers lie our fate as well. Pretty heady stuff for a nine year old to fathom.

Read more »

There are those who say that there are no coincidences in life. Seeing this article posted at jewschool may just make me a believer in that statement.

Let me start at the beginning. I have a close friend (in honor of Radiohead’s impending new album, let’s call this person “Yid A”) who is a prime example of the increasingly rare species Classical Reform Rabbi. A brilliant and die-hard rationalist (once engaging in a ten-minute classroom disputation on the merits of Kantian ethics with visiting lecturer Rabbi David Hartman), Y.A. lives according to the highest moral standards as exemplified by the biblical prophets. When it comes to the matter of food, my friend is consistent in her/his beliefs. Y.A. buys mainly organic and strongly supports her/his CSA, but wouldn’t blink twice at downing a (free-range) BLT with a glass of milk. Let me put it more bluntly - no student when we were at HUC gave more freely of their time and money to just causes; but Y.A. also went out of his/her way to find the one non-kosher butcher in Jerusalem to do her/his shopping. Read more »

Upon contemplating my impending annual trip to the Lower East Side to purchase my lulav and etrog (anyone in jcarrot-land know of a good source for organic ones?) , I began channeling my Russian immigrant ancestors, eyed a giant fresh beet from last week’s CSA pickup, and had an irresistible craving for borscht. I decided on an adventurous detour from the traditional recipe, checked the usual sources and made a fabulous roasted beet borscht that is great hot or cold, served with a garnish of sour cream and grated apple.

During the process of cooking this dish, I stumbled across my first New Year’s food resolution:

NEVER USE A HAND BLENDER TO MAKE BORSCHT

My second food resolution, lower my cholesterol, will have to wait until after I try this recipe…

Kashi is running a promotion right now, where you can virtually “trade-in” your unhealthy snacks (beef jerky, nachos, cotton candy, etc) for some actual “healthy” ones, free of charge! OK, so maybe a dark-chocolate oatmeal cookie isn’t the most healthy snack in the world either, but at least it’s:

a) whole grain

b) chocolate

c) free through the mail!

Get yours while supplies last.

Congratulations to Shahar Peer, who became the first Israeli woman to reach the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open by defeating Agnieszka Radwanska last night in the fourth round.

Unfortunately, the reporting of Peer’s accomplishment in the Times threatened to incite an international food-incident, when reporter Karen Crouse referred to Peer being “as at home as pastrami between two slices of rye bread” amongst all the Israeli fans at Flushing Meadows.

As an article in New York Magazine correctly (if snarkily) noted, Katz’s Deli is not the official cuisine of the Jewish people - especially not Sabras!! Now, if she had written that Shahar had felt as at home as a fried chickpea surrounded by tahini sauce, well, it still would have been ridiculous, but at least more culinarily accurate.

Best of luck to Peer, and if she drinks enough Kaballah Energy Drink, I’m sure she’ll do great in her match against Anna Chakvetadze tomorrow.