Sarah Rose is a writer living in New York. She is currently working on a non-fiction book, FOR ALL THE TEA IN CHINA, the story of a 19th Century botanist-turned-spy who stole the secrets of tea from Imperial China and brought tea plants to India as an undercover agent for the East India Company. To be published by Viking 2008 (Hutchison in the UK). Sarah has worked as a journalist for Reuters and the Miami Herald, and as a stringer and travel-writer based in Hong Kong. She was previously Managing Editor of Plenty Magazine, a lifestyle magazine for the “green” generation. She holds a bachelors degree from Harvard in English literature and a masters degree from the University of Chicago in humanities.
There really isn’t anything like it: chewy on the outside, bready on the inside, topped with lox and too much cream cheese, even a ripe tomato if you’re lucky. Bay Area Bites writes longingly of authentic New York bagels, which she claims are unavailable out West. However, she offers resources for where California diners can approximate the deli goodness New Yorkers take for granted.
The New Jersey Jewish Standard reports:
This month, [Kosher Vending Industries] will unveil 25 machines serving kosher dairy items for a trial run. The first machines will serve pizza, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, vegetable cutlets, potato knishes, and French fries, at a cost of $3 to $4 per item. The food, all certified by the Kof-K, will come frozen from various suppliers and Kosher Vending will repackage it for its machines. Eventually, Cohnen would like to expand to separate meat machines.
We’ve had our rants about whether one more unenlightened, processed kosher food option actually amounts to a good thing, but not so much has been said about gadgets in general — automats are really cool.
Too bad so many of the options are so bad for you.
“They think we’re going to be bigger than Kraft because of our niche market,” he said.
Dream big, guys.
The Board of Guardians of British Jews, the satirically self-titled “voice of all Jews since 1967″, objects to McDonald’s bagel breakfast sandwhich due to the fast-food chain’s use of pork-sausage with an emblematically Jewish bread.
“While we are not offended by neutral products going into a bagel such as jam or cream cheese, putting pork-sausage or bacon in it is something we cannot accept, that coupled with the recent advertising campaign by McDonald’s shows how much disregard they have for the feelings of the Jewish community,” said Board director of communal services Jacob Bloom.
The Board is threatening boycotts.
Pesach is coming.
I know what you’re thinking: Of course Pesach is coming! What did you expect, when Purim is so last week!…
Pesach is coming, I tell you.
And the shailos, oh, the shailos. How do I kasher my coffee-maker? What’s the latest on kashering microwave ovens? Does this need a special hechsher for Pesach? Why? Why not?
My grandmother used peanut oil and had no problem with it. My grandmother refused to use peanut oil, and would have spit on your Pesach kitchen.
What’s the story with mustard? Does meat need a special hechsher? What about fresh fish?
Rabbi, I’m away for Pesach; can I just do a bedikah on the front hallway of my house? How about just a bathroom?
Oh, yes, Pesach is coming, my friend.
The mass exodus of two-thirds of my shul to various relatives. We can’t get anyone to come to our Seder. Maybe they go away just to avoid being invited to our Seder.
From the Associated Press:
For years, horseradish has enjoyed a place of privilege at the seder, the carb- and symbolism-heavy meal that celebrates Passover.
Along with its counterparts on the Passover plate, horseradish helps tell the story of the Jews’ liberation from
Egyptian slavery and exodus into the desert: Unleavened, cracker-like matzoh recalls the bread the Israelites hastily made prior to fleeing into the desert. Salt water, in which parsley and eggs are dipped, symbolizes the tears slaves shed.
And horseradish generally is used to represent the bitterness of slavery.
But this year, consider adding color to the plate (and giving a nod to tradition) by substituting bitter greens — such as chicory, endive, arugula, and dandelion and mustard greens — for the horseradish.
JTA reports:
Palestinian farmers are reportedly preparing for a windfall from sales of produce to Israelis who observe Jewish law on allowing Jewish-owned land to lie fallow. The next Jewish year, 5768, is “shmitta,” meaning that it falls at the end of a seven-year cycle ordained by the Torah and in which religiously observant Israelis are formally barred from raising or harvesting fruits and vegetables.
Some fervently Orthodox groups in Israel have been in talks with Palestinian officials on obtaining produce from the Gaza Strip as an alternative, the Israeli newspaper Hatzofeh reported Monday. The meetings reportedly were facilitated by the Israeli military, which pledged to expedite the merchandise’s transport out of Gaza.
“Chicken Noodle Matzoh Ball Soup” is translated in parenthesis as “Jewish Saimin” on a Hawaii deli menu.
Kosher deli food was coopted and became Americana. Hawaii adopts Americana and translates it into Hawaiian.
It’s a process of rearticulation that has, doubtless, happened to ethnic foods throughout the ages. But it tickles me to see it at work.
Reuters reports:
February 21, 2007 — JERUSALEM - Jews must not wear fur skinned from live animals, Israel’s chief rabbi said in a religious ruling yesterday. “All Jews are obliged to prevent the horrible phenomenon of cruelty to animals and be a ‘light onto nations’ by refusing to use products that originate from acts which cause such suffering,” Rabbi Yona Metzger said.
Animal-rights campaigners in Israel and abroad say that animals are skinned alive at fur farms in China.
The ruling stopped short of banning the use of fur from animals skinned after they were slaughtered.
Over at Jewess there’s an interview with Karen Smith, specialist in Jewish eating disorders, asking the question: are Jewish women more prone to eating disorders than other populations?
There are the expected answers: Jews tend to be affluent and anorexia tracks affluence; there’s no actual data on Jews per se, but educated groups are more likely to seek treatment.
And then there’s the whackadoo: did you know that anorexia is feminism’s fault? “I would say that it [anorexia] is a reaction to the feminist movement, which history would support.”
I was struck by this quote in the NYTimes write up of the Whole Foods/Wild Oats merger
One reason that Whole Foods sees Trader Joe’s as a formidable rival is because the two grocers already serve many of the same higher-income consumers — the same customers who Wal-Mart has hoped to attract by adding organic foods.
Trader Joes is primarily a prepared foods store, not an organic or natural foods store. The Street sees the organic foods customer as the desirable “higher-income consumer” – people willing to pay more for things that are beautiful and easy. In other words, to the analysts, organic buyers are only contingently healthy/environmental shoppers, not necessarily so. Organic is just a symbol, another way of saying “luxury foods” shopper.
Big Organic just got lots bigger.
Bloomberg reports:
Feb. 22 — Whole Foods Market Inc., the largest U.S. natural-foods grocer, plans to buy rival Wild Oats Markets Inc. for $565 million after first-quarter profit declined for the first time in five quarters.
As if there isn’t enough handwringing in the Jewish community over falling birthrates and, not coincidentally, educated women taking too long to marry and reproduce, along comes a reputable study that suggests transfats — the magic ingredient in parve deserts – will make women infertile.
In the study, the researchers analyzed data from 18,555 healthy women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study to see if there was any association between intake of trans fat and infertility. The participants were married and trying to get pregnant between 1991 and 1999.
A woman’s risk of infertility increased by 73 percent for every 2 percent of energy she took from trans fat instead of carbohydrates, the researchers found.
Similarly, the risk of infertility increased by 79 percent for every 2 percent of energy from trans fats instead of omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. The risk more than doubled for every 2 percent of energy from trans fat instead of monounsaturated fat.
So what’ll it be, Jack Wertheimer: should we stop getting advanced degrees or stop keeping kosher?
Or just skip desert so we can maintain our girlish figures?
I’ve been waiting out the winter on Oahu, where eating local is whole new kind of different.
Hawaii is a mutt culture — a mix of Pacific Islanders, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and military, which is to say, everyone else in the American melting pot. For most people here, local food, or the kind of food your great grandmother might recognize, means everything under the tropical sun.
If local includes anything on either side of the Pacific, does it stand for anything at all?
Orthodox factions are slamming a Conversvative movement proposal to create an ethically motivated “justice” hecsher certifying workers rights and safety standards at kosher processing plants, the Forward reports.
In a column in The Jewish Press, R. Gershon Tannenbaum, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi affilliated with the Satmar sect, Hisachdus Horabbonim, denounced the social justice hechsher.
The Hisachdus kol koreh called upon all observant Jews to reject the introduction of any type of tsedek heckscher, something never previously heard of. The Hisachdus views the suggestion as an attempt by those outside the observant community to infiltrate and dilute the existing framework of kashrus certifications.
