Lovers of local honey and urban beekeepers rejoice!  This morning the New York City Board of Health lifted the ban on beekeeping in the City!  Lots of good folks like Just Food and the New York City Beekeepers Association have been putting a lot of great effort into making this happen!

My boyfriend is really into good podcasts and came home the other night insisting that I watch this.  And he was right, Dan Barber gives a charming and very insightful talk about sustainable fishing.  Check it out:

Cholent, for hundreds of years the traditional Sabbath-day meal for observant Jews in many countries, is a food for which there is no standard recipe; its ingredients are as diverse as the places where Jews have lived. A slow-cooked stew containing meat, vegetables, potatoes, beans and spices, it is one of the quintessential Jewish comfort foods and a dish that many look forward to from Sabbath to Sabbath.

Yeshiva University students will hold a “Cholent Cook-off” in Weissberg Commons on its Wilf Campus in Washington Heights, on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 2:45PM.  Fifteen teams of four students at Yeshiva College, the men’s undergraduate school, will prepare their dishes the night before beginning at 10:30PM.  The next afternoon, a panel of discriminating palates will crown the winner.

Since it is so near Valetine’s Day we thought we’d share this cute website dedicated to writing Valentines to food.  According to the website:

My Food Valentine is a Collective Storytelling project where you can come and express your love for food by writing them a love-letter.

It is [Yaminie Patodia's] thesis project for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. I was interested in exploring the deeper connections people had with food, but in a fun way.

For those of you with basic cable and can stay up until 11:30pm, may have caught this interview last night. If not, here is the bit including the end of the interview where Colbert eats bacon in front of Foer. It’s worth checking out and worth checking out his book too.

My boyfriend is Brazilian.  To look at him you’d probably think he was Middle Eastern, with his dark complexion.  He speaks with an American accent that is very South Florida, but none-the-less he was born in Brazil.

Last week for no particular reason I wanted to surprise him with a Brazilian inspired meal. However, most Brazilian cuisine involves meat or fish – two things my boyfriend is loath to eat.  (We do occasionally eat humanly raised grass-fed local sustainable meat, but he finds seafood appalling.)   Feijoada, considered the national dish of Brazil consists of black beans slow cooked with various parts of the pig.  Since my boyfriend loves meatless rice and beans, so I decided to get creative.

On the Internet I researched various feijoada recipes, which mostly relied on lots of salt and pork and very little other flavoring unless you count the beef bits.  But how could I keep things kosher and compete with recipes that look like a butcher shop in a pot?  There were a lot of vegetarian black bean recipes online, but this needed to be more than just rice and beans, I needed to make this complex and interesting to call it feijoada.  So I explored the Internet for some more tastes of Brazil.

Okay, so the job market is pretty lousy right now, but I got this job posting via email and though I’d pass it along.

Sales and Operations Manager

KOL Foods, LLC puts kosher meat and ethics on the same plate so consumers can feel good about the meat they eat. KOL Foods sources and sells grass-fed, non-industrial, healthy lamb and beef and pastured poultry directly to individuals. Since its foundation in 2007, the interest in KOL Foods’ products has grown rapidly, and, consequently, they are now available in the East Coast and the Midwest primarily through our website. As demand is increasing KOL Foods is seeking to expand in the Eastern United States and, in the near future, nationwide.

KOL Foods is unique as it operates differently from industrial kosher meat businesses. As a values-based business, our mission is to produce food that is in harmony with nature, neighbors and tradition – all the way from farm to fork.   For further information on KOL Foods, please go to:  www.kolfoods.com .

What is Jewish food? Avoiding shellfish and pork and never eating meat with dairy? Hummus? Kreplach? Whatever your Bubbe used to make?

What makes a cuisine Jewish?  Other East Asian cultures have vegetarian diets, which by default wouldn’t be mixing meat with dairy.  Hummus is wildly popular throughout the Middle East. And are kreplach so very different than Italian tortellini?

So what is Jewish food?  It’s like what is asking what your comfort food is.  Probably whatever your family makes.  If you have an Eastern European background, brisket, matzoh ball soup and knishes may be the norm.  A Sephardic background may involve more Mediterranean dishes.

But can this identification with food change?  When I was in college, my comfort food was Macaroni and Cheese out of a box.  As an adult, my go-to comfort dish is sautéed mushrooms and kale.  So yes, I’m a believer that people can change.  So can what we think of as Jewish cuisine change?

FROM THE BAY TO THE GULF – Do you live in the California Bay area, are in your 20’s or 30’s and interested in important food issues?  Take your social justice passion down to New Orleans.  Join Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) and the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) for a week of service, learning, and activism.

You will travel to New Orleans from Jan. 13-18, 2010 to work with The School at Blair Grocery.  Participants will learn about issues around food and sustainability and explore the connection between local Bay Area concerns and local New Orleans concerns.

I love cooking big dinners especially when they come with interesting dishes or new culinary challenges.  Thanksgiving has been a favorite of mine for a long time, since I have in part not been celebrating the Jewish food holidays for all that long.   Even when I was college I was whipping up elaborate meals despite limitations to space (one year it was a dormitory kitchen in the basement of the building) or even supplies (I forgot to buy aluminum foil so I improvised by covering my chicken, not a turkey, in applesauce, which by the way kept the meat moist and gave it a slightly sweet flavor).

Living in New York City poses its own set of advantages and challenges.  I mean in New York, you can get anything and usually get it delivered (at least in Manhattan).  I’ve found that mostly to be true – that was until I tried to serve venison for Thanksgiving.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the 4th Annual Manischewitz Cook-Off!” said Chef Pépin. “I always encourage people to experiment with new types of ethnic cuisine and products.”  As the Manischewitz Company announced the launch of the 4th Annual Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off, a cooking contest designed to encourage home cooks to challenge themselves in preparing a kosher meal using the new Manischewitz Broth. The contest encourages home chefs to experiment with different ethnic foods and to think of preparing a Kosher inspired meal as part of that experience, in the same way people enjoy preparing Japanese, Italian, Mexican, Chinese and other popular ethnic cuisine.

Entrants will compete for a chance to be crowned the “King or Queen of Kosher” and win the $25,000 grand prize package including GE Profile kitchen appliances, cash and more. Five finalists will win an all-expense paid trip to NYC to compete live on March 18th at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan.  The contestants will be judged by an on-site cooking panel consisting of food media and other culinary experts.

On Friday, Sholom Rubashkin, the former owner of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, was convicted of 86 out of 91 fraud charges.  It has been over a year since the the Pottsville, Iowa slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors was raided by federal authorities arresting hundreds of workers.  Since the raid, vigorous debate has ensued regarding the treatment of the workers, the animals and even what it means to eat kosher meat.  The Jew and the Carrot hopes to continue this important debate.

Click here for the Jew and the Carrot’s coverage of the story including interviews, commentary and even a terrific video on the lives of the slaughterhouse workers.

It all started with an excessive amount of cabbage.  One of my housemates wanted to make a pretty and delicious green and purple cabbage salad for a dinner party she was attending.   “Why are your cabbages so big in this country?  In South Africa we have little cabbages!”  True, even after making her salad a few times we still had a lot of cabbage left over.

Then I got cabbage in my CSA share – two heads of it.  “How do you feel about sauerkraut?”  I suggested, thinking about my own German heritage.  “Or kimchi?” was her suggestion.  Now we started getting excited. She pulled out her Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, which was a rather comprehensive collection of pickles (although no kimchi).  So several kimchi recipes were consulted online and we got to work.

We all know the economy is pretty lousy right now and it can be pretty tough if you are looking for a job (like I am).  So if you are a foodie or want to work within the “sustainable food movement” where can you look?  The following is from an email I received the other day and thought I should share with the Jew and the Carrot community.

Sustainable Food Jobs is pleased to announce the launch of its new website!  Most Americans have never heard of the term “sustainable food.”  Tell someone its your career focus and be prepared to explain yourself.  Rest assured… this site understands what you mean with no elevator speech required!  As a recent graduate looking to branch into the world of sustainable food, I had a difficult time knowing where to look for the most up-to-date job opportunities available.  Typically, job listings are dispersed among environmental conservation and individual non-profit websites.  But what if job seekers new to this and aren’t familiar with all of the non-profits that specialize in sustainable food?  That is where this website comes in!  It will provide job seekers with the most up-to-date job opportunities available in the domestic sustainable food sector.

Check it out!