Seldom have I found an article as compelling as the January, 19th NY Times article The Food Chain - A New Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories.

Many of us are very conscious of what we eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced. We do what we can in our communities by supporting CSAs, local farmers markets, buying not toxic household cleaning products etc. While we are aware on some level of why these choices are important, I find that it is often hard to see the big picture. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around the extent to which there is a global food crisis emerging all around us. Because we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, in many ways this reality has not yet hit home.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this article.

Ahh the food conference …. my head is still spinning from all of the wonderful experiences I had. People have asked me what it was like at the conference and its still hard for me to fully describe. It was an environment where everyone was truly both always learning and teaching. It didn’t only happen at sessions - it happened over meals, conversations, the communal celebration of Chanukah and in quiet moments alone when people reflected  on their own personal food journeys.

I had the priviledge of sitting on a pannel and doing a cooking demo at the conference. On the panel Feeding the Masses: Successes and Challenges of Improving Institutional Food Systems I talk about the work that The Childrens Aid Society does to provide better food to the thousands of children they serve in New York city. I described my experiences helping develop programs, training educators, and teaching nutrition through hands on cooking to kids and parents in East Harlem and the Bronx (if you were not able to attend the panel and want to know more let me know). In the cooking demo entitled “Real Food for Your Real Life” we had Curried Red Lentil Soup, a wonderful Garlic “Ranch” Dressing (or dip), and Pumpkin Seed Pesto on the menu (see recipes below the jump).

Read more »

  When I last left you, I had just placed approximately 4 1/2 pounds of chicken into a large zip-lock bag to marinade in some lovely pomegranate juice with a cinnamon stick….This marinating went on for 2 days (I kid you not).  Each day I would turn the bag to make sure that the chicken pieces were evenly absorbing the wonderful pomegranate flavor. I took a couple of sniffs to make sure that the chicken still smelled fresh, which I assure you it did, in fact the only thing I smelled was the pomegranate juice infused with fragrant cinnamon (the trick is to make sure that the chicken is super fresh when you buy it – check that the expiration date is a long way off, but more importantly check that it doesn’t have that funky old chicken smell …)

On Friday morning I took the bag out of the fridge and placed the contents of the bag - chicken, marinade, and all into a baking pan. I covered the birds and placed them into my (newly sort of repaired) oven preheated to 350 degrees. The chicken baked in the oven for approximately 1 hour undisturbed. When I pulled the chicken out of the oven the meat was moist and plump.

Read more »

In preparation for Rosh Hashanah I have been thinking about what I always seem to be thinking about …. namely food. This year I will be preparing meals for a yet to be determined number of family and friends (quite a feat in my tiny only semi-functional kitchen with a mini stove that has not worked properly in 2 years and burners that seem to go on strike every few weeks). As this New Year approaches, I’ve been mulling over the significance and symbolism of food in our tradition. For much of our collective history, Jews were an agricultural people, maintaining the delicate balance of give and take with the earth. They nurtured the land that sustained them and directly reaped the benefits of their labor. Even if you yourself were not a farmer, you likely knew your neighbor who was. Nothing was taken for granted, the rainfall, the fertility of the soil, the well preserved seeds passed down from generation to generation, the livestock, the fruit trees, and the grain - it was all very real to the Jews who came together to celebrate their feast days. Simply put, food was holy.

Needless to say, today our relationship with food is very different. We are much farther removed from our food sources. Even when we try to support local agriculture, we are not dependent upon it. We are part of a thriving global economy that makes almost anything available to us at anytime (at a price of course). So if there is a hailstorm in northern New York, or Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, and crops are decimated - most New Yorkers would not even notice. We have been conditioned to associate food with hermetically sealed plastic packaging instead of the soil, plants, and aimals that are the true sources of our sustenance (which is why I believe that so many people who do eat meat are sqeemish about witnessing an animal being slaughtered ala hazon’s schitah debate - or even making the mental association that their “cutlet” in all of its skinless boneless glory was once a living breathing bird)

What I have decided to do this Rosh Hashanah is to focus on the local and seasonal bounty and blend in the traditional foods symbolic of the goodness, sweetness, and fruitfulness we hope to be blessed with in the year to come. Read more »

It is 4:49 PM. I just got home and wheeled the dolly piled with three boxes and a cooler, a huge suitcase filled with knives, cutting boards, platters, pots, pans, an immersion blender, citrus juicer, my arsenal of spices, and countless other kitchen necessities, and a small carry-on sized suitcase filled with my personal belongings into my little Manhattan apartment. I guess this would not be called traveling light, but I just got home from an intense five day experience cooking for the Hazon nourishment cleanse retreat.

Read more »