Sweet potatoes could be the mascot of the sustainable foods movement. Packed with nutrition, including more than twice the daily suggested serving of vitamin A, antioxidants, protein, iron, potassium and other hard to get minerals, sweet potatoes provide a huge benefit to calorie ratio. They taste wonderful, they’re even anti-inflammatory, which can help mitigate inflammation-related diseases like asthma, arthritis, and heart disease. Because they’re root vegetables, they absorb everything (including pesticides and chemical fertilizers) that’s in the soil around them, so it’s important to get organic sweet potatoes so you can eat the nutrient-rich skin. Finally, sweet potatoes come into season right now, in November and December, just when straight-off-the-farm bounty starts to wane. At your farmer’s market, you should be able to find just-dug sweet potatoes. Prepare them by poking a few holes and baking them in the oven or by boiling them, then use the starchy, nutrient-rich water in soup or other recipes. Straight up is the best way to enjoy these excellent roots, since they taste great with nothing at all added, but they drop jaws and fill bellies in this sweet and savory pancake recipe.
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The joy of Diaspora is the variety of experience it brings into our tradition. Almost any kind of food has analogues in every tributary of Jewish heritage and candy is no exception. We’ve sifted through the internet and our cookbook collections to bring you Jewish candy recipes from Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Mediterranean, including, of course, the sticky and celebrated halvah, in its classic sesame rendition and with a serendipitous autumnal twist.
Raw Halvah
(From Arrowhead Mills)
1/2 cup Sesame Seeds (ground)
2 tablespoons Sesame Seeds (whole)
3 tablespoons Raw honey
1/4 cup Sesame Tahini (use the driest part of the jar)
1/8 teaspoon Almond extract
Grind 1/2 cup seeds in a blender. Mix ground seeds, whole seeds, tahini, honey and extract in a bowl all together until thoroughly blended. Roll into small balls or into a long roll and refrigerate.
More after the jump…
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This year of the food crisis, we’ve heard a lot about world hunger in the newspaper and the blogosphere. As countries and as individuals with generally more and better access to more and better food, most of us probably feel imperative to help spread the wealth. The U.S.A., where I come from, is the largest food donor in the world, but this year, on World Food Day at the United Nations, the U.S.A. issued the world’s biggest mea culpa to the international community.
Former-President Clinton did the talking, telling the UN that he “blew it” on food. Not only did he blow it, the IMF blew it, the World Bank blew it, and the UN blew it. In the end though, that’s a lot of air, and not a lot of policy.
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There’s no food without water, and some people love to talk about how the destruction of our watersheds will lead us all to perdition before our teeth even fall out. It’s the kind of doom-saying that makes a lot of folks want to crawl under a rock instead of thinking about change. But saving enormous amounts of water is actually pretty easy and, to a large degree, can be accomplished with a time investment instead of a monetary one. In the spirit of the new year, here are some tips and resources on how to change your kitchen for the better (world-wise and wallet-wise).
Start with your Sink.
To repair the world, you can start by repairing your sink. Fixing leaking faucets can save 20 gallons of water a day. Just spend a couple of bucks and a few minutes screwing on an aerator and watch your water bill go down. If you need one, you can also get a water filtration system for your tap instead of drinking bottled water, which uses lots of water in production and pollutes the world with plastic. Finally, unlike quails and manna, water still falls from the sky - so you can harvest rainwater for your garden using a rain barrel. The Florida Extension teaches you how to build one here.
Or, you could get fancy.
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Rabbi Julian Sinclair is an author, educator, and economist. He is also the co-founder and Director of Education for Jewish Climate Initiative, a Jerusalem based NGO that is articulating and mobilizing a Jewish response to climate change. Before starting JCI, Julian worked as an economist advising the UK Government and for a British political think tank. Meanwhile, he authored the book Lets Schmooze: Jewish Words Today and is working on completing a Phd in the mystical thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Phew!
Sinclair lives in Jerusalem and has been featured on NPR and interviewed for the New York Times by our own Leah Koenig. Hazon is delighted to invite Rabbi Sinclair as a presenter at this year’s Hazon Food Conference, December 25-28, 2008.
Get a sneak peek at what Julian has to say below the jump. And find out more/ register for Hazon’s Food Conference, here!
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As a kid, anything edible held my attention. Sukkahs, charged with dappled light and dedicated to the harvest, seemed to combine all of my interests into one sacred space. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt, standing alone in the autumn-smelling sukkah, under a ceiling hung with fresh, growing foods; and I’ll never forget my disappointment, year after year, at the sight of apples, squash and blue corn wizening and rotting on their strings.
Now that I’m a full grown canner, it occurs to me that the sukkah, with it’s commandments for good air circulation, more shade than light, and it’s tradition of hanging edibles, is a perfect place to preserve for the cold months. After all, turning sukkot decorations into food is already a tradition—Etrogs make it into wine or brandy after the celebration’s over.
Below, you can find some tips and recipes for celebrating God’s gift of food and shelter through the year.
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Yom Kippur stirs my strongest Jewish food memory - it’s strange, but true. Since I was in the single digits I can remember walking to Ne’ila services with my mother and father, carrying a bag filled with two essential components of our holiday inside. One was a three-pound sack of apples, the then ubiquitous McIntosh variety. The other was six or so tiny butter sandwiches on my mother’s anise bread.
The bread was a high, oblong loaf shining from egg glaze and redolent of liquorice, which I despised as a child. On our walk, I would watch the plastic sack of break-fast food thumping against my father’s trousered leg, a reminder that holy space of Yom Kippur was about to close over us and leave us to our good intentions and the rest of the year. I couldn’t understand why they liked it so much, that sweet, seeded bread. (Now, of course, I know better.)
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A farmer, an educator and an activist, Michael Ableman is also a photographer and a writer. His three books include his latest, Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it, for which Ableman traveled North America chronicling the passion and prowess of the new generation of American farmers. He currently farms in British Columbia with his wife and two sons, and will be joining us as a presenter at the Hazon Food Conference in December, 2008. (Click here to find out more and register for Hazon’s Food Conference.)
I talked to Ableman about his hopes for the sustainable agriculture movement, his many hats, and Judaism’s connection to the cycle of the seasons.
Find the full interview below the jump. Read more »
Headache, fatigue and a metaphysical hunger for chocolate: the sure signs of sugar withdrawal, and during Pesach 2002, in post-industrial Wisconsin, I had to settle for potato chips and jelly.
Potato chips and jelly. Yep, you heard me. Picture an 18 year old New York-Jewish co-ed with a history of cookie eating and a mom who’s not so good at the whole care package thing. Now combine that with a supermarket kosher section that could fit 80,000 times in the space of this period. I needed something, man, and the matzoh I’d horded from the Madison supermarket one hour’s drive away just wasn’t cutting it anymore.
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You won’t notice it on the supermarket shelves or the tables of Jewish America this autumn, but both apples and honey are embattled, and by the same mysterious foe. I’m talking Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and if you think that name sounds like it’s describing a symptom more than a disease, you’re right. CCD, like the similarly vague Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Restless Leg Syndrome in humans, are all named for their symptoms because we don’t know their cause. All we know is that bees are disappearing, abandoning their hives and scattering to the winds, not making honey, not pollinating the flowers and trees, and those minute defectors could cost us far out of proportion with their size.
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New Yorkers crammed into the street at today’s eighth annual NYC International Pickle Day like so many Kirby cukes in a barrel. Pickle-makers from Essex Street to South Korea came to sample and sell their wares to an eager audience of thousands.
Where was I last year on pickle day? you might be wondering, but in fact, you were probably here, on Orchard Street, biting into one of Guss’ famous three-quarter sours with it’s crisp, salty bite that’s more refreshing than a gulp of Gatorade. According to the folks at Guss’, the festival has been packed every year since the New York Food Museum began sponsoring it in 2001.
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Approx. 3 1/2 cups of pureed winter squash
3/4 cup apple juice or cider
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Juice of half a lemon
Combine pumpkin, apple juice, spices, and sugar in a large saucepan; stir well. Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes or until thickened. Stir frequently. Adjust spices to taste. Stir in lemon juice, or more to taste.
Once cool, pumpkin butter can be kept in an airtight container in the fridge for months.
To preserve:
Spoon hot pumpkin mixture into hot jars, filling to within 1/4 inch from top. Remove air bubbles; wipe jar rims. Cover at once with metal lids, and screw on bands. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
Not only will these methods make your decorations serve dual functions (a help for small budgets in rough times), they’ll also reduce the amount of space in your house dedicated to storing boxes of tinsel. Write in with your own ideas for how to make your Sukkot bounty last all year.
Adapted from AllRecipes
Photo credit: Fat Free Vegan
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Make an infusion of 4 T dried or 8 T chopped fresh sage leaves and one cup of boiling water, simmered together for about ten minutes, uncovered. Strain through a cloth strainer for about ½ cup sage infusion.
Add to this:
3 ½ cups granulated sugar (I sometimes reduce the sugar in her recipes)
1 cup fresh apple cider
¼ cup lemon juice
As it comes to a boil, add:
½ bottle Certo (extra points for anyone who can come up with a non-Kraft product to substitute for liquid pectin)
Stir well again as it comes to a boil and boil for about one minute. Pour immediately into clean jelly glasses (five ounce canning jars), process and serve with roast meats or cheeses.
Recipe from Fine Preserving
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Israeli Chocolate-Coated Orange Peels
From About.com
You’ll want to use low spray or organic oranges for this recipe, if you can find them, since the peel of the orange absorbs the toxins sprayed on the fruit. If low or no spray oranges are used, you may be able to skip or shorten the first soaking step, since it looks like a detox soak to me.
3 oranges
2 cups sugar plus extra for rolling
2 T fresh lemon juice
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 tsp. vegetable oil
Line a baking sheet with wax paper. Set aside.
Scrub oranges well, half them and scoop out the flesh. Cover shells with cold water, weighting them with a plate to keep them submerged, and let soak for about four hours, replacing the water once.
Cut each shell in half and place in a large heavy saucepan. Add water to cover and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Boil for 15 minutes, drain and repeat the process. When oranges are cool enough to handle, cut into strips about 1/4 by 2″. Return the strips to the saucepan, add sugar and 1 cup water. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook gently, stirring occasionally, until liquid is almost gone, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Add the lemon juice, stir and drain the strips in a sieve. When they are cool enough to handle, spread on the prepared baking sheet.
For the chocolate dip, combine all but 1/4 cup of the chocolate with the oil in the top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water. Stir just until melted, remove double boiler from heat, and add the remaining chocolate, stirring until melted. Roll each orange strip in sugar, then dip half of each peel into the chocolate and return to the baking sheet. Place in the freezer for a minute or two to let the chocolate set. Remove from the freezer and let them sit for several hours until they are firm. Makes about 80 pieces, which can be stored in an airtight container for up to three months.
