The Jew & The Carrot believes that Rosh Hashanah offers the perfect opportunity to usher health and sustainability into our year (see why here). So why celebrate with the same old greasy kugel served on plastic plates and washed down with Diet Coke?

The Green Rosh Hashanah Dinner Challenge wants YOU to inspire us by creating the greenest, most locally-inspired, and delicious Rosh Hashanah dinner ever. Whether you’re hosting 25 of your closest friends, or bringing a bit of sustainability to your hosts’ house, go ahead and let your green-flag fly. Send us a photo and description of your dinner (or dish), along with your recipes. (Extra credit for impressive food porn!)

More details & enter below the jump. Read more »

Hey Jewish foodies! Adamah has two upcoming events: A pickle day in NYC this Sunday, and a brunch on the farm next Sunday in Connecticut. Now’s your chance to get a taste of local, organic, Jewish produce, before season ends!

NYC International Pickle Day
Sunday, Sept 14 - 11-4:30pm - Orchard Street (b/t Broome and Grand) - Free

This Sunday, Adamah will join a host of other pickle-heavyweights - Guss’, Wheelhouse, Rick’s Picks, etc. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (natch), for a day of brine-filled fun.

Activities include: eating free pickles, canning demonstrations, musical acts - and there’s free valet bike parking available all day.

See below for more info about Brunch in the Field

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It’s that time again!  Time to dust off the apple & honey plate, break out your favorite  chicken or vegetable soup recipe, connect with friends and family, and take a moment (or as many moments as possible) to reflect on the past year, and look forward to the year to come.

As you prepare, The Jew & The Carrot is here to help you infuse this year’s Rosh Hashanah celebration with sustainable style.  Our Healthy, Sustainable Rosh Hashanah Resources provides tips on how to:

- Add healthy, and earth-friendly touches to your Rosh Hashanah table.
- Find opportunities to connect to the natural world, even before tashlich.
- Liven up your table conversation with meaning and Jewish learning.
- Find new, earth-friendly ways to sweeten up the holiday.

Check out the Healthy, Sustainable Rosh Hashanah Resource List here.

The New York Times Dining Section today published a jeremiad of vegan traveler, Wayne Pacelle, who lamented the lack of vegan options at airports.  I was once a vegan too, so I can sympathize with the feeling of being hungry, and surrounded by untouchable flesh and dairy-filled foods.  But as I read through the article, I was underwhelmed by his argument - and by his anecdote about the mean security guards who tried to take away the peanut butter stashed in his bag. Read more »

This morning, while rumbling along the Q train to work, I nearly spit a mouthful of hot tea onto the man standing in front of me, as I surreptitiously read his copy of The New York Times. The cause of my near projectile mishap: a full page, color advertisement for corn syrup.

The ad, which was funded by the Corn Refiners Association (natch) featured a photo of a bagel spread with a dollop of bubble-gum pink cream cheese (decidedly unappetizing), and asked, “Could it be another schmear campaign?” Below the picture it pandered:

“Lately, high fructose corn syrup has had its name dragged through the media. Truth is, it’s nutritionally the same as table sugar. Has the same number of calories too. Even registered dietitians agree that you can keep enjoying the foods and beverages you love, just do it in moderation.”

The ad directed readers to a website called Sweet Surprise - which turned out to be a vapid collection of pages that tried to disguise pseudo-scientific stats and statements like,”high fructose corn syrup enhances fruit and spice flavors” as useful information. It seems that - just like the politicians the ad evokes - corn syrup manufacturers are trying to clean up their sullied public image.

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CSA members know plenty well what Community-Supported Agriculture tastes like - but what does local, organic food look like from week to week over the course of a season? Middle-schooler and Tuv Ha’Aretz Philadelphia member, Maya Kassutto, took on photographing her CSA distribution as part of her Bat Mitzvah project. As “staff photographers,” she and her father, Zach, documented the people and produce that add flavor to Congregation Kol Ami’s parking lot every week.

Below, find a photo journal of their work - a mouth-watering tribute to the season-in-progress. (Prepare to be impressed by this 13-year olds serious photography skills!)

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In the beginning, there were vegetables. Then came fruit, and it was good. Now, Community-Supported Agriculture programs across the country are partnering with local farmers to include everything from milk and cheese, eggs, flowers, meat, and even locally-grown wheat berries in their members’ shares. This broad expansion indicates that people across the country are clamoring for more opportunities to eat local food, and that the CSA model provides the structural support to make it happen.

Hazon’s Tuv Ha’Aretz Jewish CSA program is no exception. This year, the Long Island Tuv Ha’Aretz program, which is run out of the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore, partnered with 5 Spoke Creamery to bring their kosher, raw-milk, artisanal cheeses to members’ tables. The cheese share was a first for the Tuv Ha’Aretz community and the company, which had never distributed their products via CSA before.

We interviewed Tuv Ha’Aretz coordinator and The Jew & The Carrot contributor, Eric Schulmiller, as well as 5 Spoke Creamery owner, Alan Glustoff to find out how the partnership panned out. If you’ve ever read The Onion’s Point/Counterpoint segment, the dual-interview below is kind of like that - except replace the biting sarcasm with earnestness and a passion for all things cheese.
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The Jew & The Carrot reader, Naomi, recently asked:

“I was surprised to see Hydrox at ShopRite the other day, in ‘vintage’-style packaging. I had thought they were defunct. Why would they be coming back now?”

Good question, Naomi. As I wrote back in April, Hydrox - the chocolate sandwich cookie loved by kiddush-hopping Jews everywhere - was discontinued in 2003, just a few years after their fiercest competitor, Oreo, went kosher. According to “The Hydrox Cookie [Fan] Page,” Hydrox, which were first made in 1908 by Sunshine bakery actually preceded Oreos by four years. But Nabisco’s version quickly became the platonic ideal of a sandwich cookie, leaving Hydrox in a perpetual position of runner up.

Now, after 5 years off the market, Kellogg (which owned the brand at the time of its demise) is bringing Hydrox back to the Jews people.

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Shabbat Shalom from everyone at Hazon and The New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride!

To find out about the Ride or to sponsor a rider, click here.

My senior year of college wasn’t all that long ago (going on 5 years), but it feels like a lifetime. So it’s hard for me to remember now the sense of low-grade panic that consumed me during most of second semester as I struggled to figure out “what I was going to do with my life.” Luckily, one of my house mates told me about WWOOF - an international organization that pairs up willing volunteers with work stays on organic farms across the world. Within the span of a week, I had checked out WWOOF online, paid for my membership via the web, emailed a handful of farms halfway across the world, and secured myself a real life summer stint on an organic vineyard in Tuscany.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand how remarkable this process was, or that fact that a mere decade or two earlier, it would not have been possible. But the Eat Well Guide understands - and their new resource Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Movement is out to clue everyone else in.

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Hazon’s New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride is starts this weekend! The office is buzzing with last minute details, and piles of water bottles, cue sheets and other random gear are sprouting on just about every available surface. In homage to the bike-mania, I thought I’d round up a few of a growing list of green-minded food companies, which make a point of delivering their goodies to customers via two wheels.

Bobby G’s Pizzeria Based in Berkeley, this pizza company is working to create “Go Green Go” - a Delivery Service with a Conscience.  Their fleet will include bikes, as well as hybrid cars.

Hot Lips Pizza Once, back when I lived in Eugene, Oregon, I ordered a pizza delivered in a reusable plastic box.  The delivery guy came into our apartment, helped us transfer the pizza from box to table, and then left with the box.  Genius!  So is Hot Lips Pizza, a Portland-based pizza companies dedicated to sustainable, foot-powered delivery.

Mission Pie This pie company in San Francisco delivers freshly-baked fruit pies by bicycle to area residents.  They also partner with the equally cool Pie Ranch, and educational program where kids are empowered to grow the ingredients to bake fresh pies on a, no joke, pie-shaped farm.

Soup Cycle Founded by Portland-resident (and my friend) Jed Lazar, Soup Cycle is a simple and satisfying concept: delicious soup, delivered to your home, by bicycle.

All of these examples happen to be on the West Coast - with two in Portland, where the kids are just bike crazy!  If you know of any other foodie bike ventures, please share them below.

And if you want to sponsor a participant for on The New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride (namely, me and my fiance Yoshie), click here!  You’d be doing a world of good supporting Jewish and environmental causes here and in Israel, and you’d also have our heartfelt appreciation.

The Midwood section of Brooklyn, a largely Orthodox neighborhood known for it’s busy thoroughfare, “Avenue J,” where kosher eateries sprout like mushrooms (and where, ironically, I consumed one bite of the most disgusting mushroom pizza I’ve ever come across), is getting a culinary face lift. The newly opened Pomegranate, a 20,000 square-foot supermarket, exclusively sells kosher-certified products. The store, which houses three kitchens (dairy, meat, and parve) also features items that are not regularly found in kosher stores like organic produce, panko breadcrumbs, and fresh mozarella.

With such a massive square footage, and press mentions this week in both the New York Times Dining Section and New York Magazine (as well as across a smattering of blogs), Pomegranate is the embodiment of the kosher consumers’ growing desire to eat outside of the traditional “Jewish foods” box. The store also indicates that healthy and sustainable food trends are beginning to make their way into the kosher community. (The boxes of matzo now come in whole wheat form.) Granted, the organic produce at Pomegranate was likely grown in Peru, and many of the “healthy” products sold at the store boast questionable or outdated “nutritionism” health benefits like, “With Splenda! No carbs! Sweet! Low cholesterol!” But it’s definitely a step in a healthy direction. I hope they make pizza!

The Hekhsher Tzedek, a proposed certification for foods that are both kosher (in the traditional sense of the word) and also ethically produced - has been making waves in the American Jewish community for the last year and a half. Meanwhile, a similar project has already taken on mainstream status in Israel.

The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article about Bemaaglei Tzedek (Circles of Justice) - a non-profit organization that created a “Social Seal,” which is awarded to restaurants that prepare and serve food in an ethical way (focusing mostly on workers’ rights like ensuring health insurance, and overtime to restaurant employees). According to the CSM:

[The social seal is] catching on, with dozens of new restaurants contacting Bemaaglei Tzedek every week to inquire about it. In Jerusalem, where awareness of the seal is strongest, nearly one-third of all restaurants have a social seal today, according to Banner.

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Every so often, Hazon gets an inspiring email from someone who did something really cool. Nadya Strizhevskaya from LA sent us one of those emails. In it she wrote:

Last Friday night, a group of my friends gathered in my apartment in Los Angeles for a Shabbat dinner that was different from all other Friday nights. A week before, all the guests had received an invitation with detailed instructions on what they should bring and where they should shop. Some were asked to bake their own challah, others to make their own cheese, another to churn out homemade pasta. All of the fruits and vegetables had to come from our local farmer’s market and the wines had to be produced no farther than the Baron Herzog winery in Oxnard, CA… We also discussed a number of Talmudic passages on vegetarianism and communal responsibility, which we pulled from Hazon’s Food For Thought source book. This was our first attempt at a sustainable, local Friday night dinner.

Emails like Nadya’s really make our day. But instead of just feeling giddy in the office, we asked Nadya to pull together everything she and her friends did into a Green Your Shabbat Table resource page so we could spread the joy. She did. Check out her ideas here, and host a sustainable Shabbat of your own. And if you have tips from your own dinners, please share them below.