The incredibly talented visual artist, Mat Tonti, created a beautiful rendition of the controversial goat schecting at last year’s Hazon Food Conference for PresenTense Magazine. It captures the event, the mood, and the whole experience perfectly. Kudos, Mat - and thanks :)

View the full image here.
For more about the schecting, click here.

Save the date: This year’s Food Conference is happening December 25-28 on the Monterey Penninsula, Califorina. Registration opening SOON - check Hazon’s website for more details.

After two months working on the pig farm and a few weeks of recuperation, I’m back to the The Jew & The Carrot blogging world, while living, cooking, eating, composting and blogging in Tel Aviv. Good to be back.

There’s an incredible magazine that I’ve been meaning to post about. It’s called Meatpaper and as its cover states, it is “your journal of meat culture.” And it really is. Meatpaper is a beautiful graphic art print magazine that documents the recent fleischgeist. It features incredible pictures and photo essays in addition to interesting, bizarre, and funny interviews and articles. Some of the issues the magazine covers are similar to ones discussed here on The Jew & The Carrot (debates about the moral consumption of meat) and others are certainly not (the importance of eating bull penis, and whether or not one should eat their spouse if deserted on an island together.)

In issue 3, there is an article on eating testicles in Tunisia, a meditation on why meat is so photogenic (and whether or not clown noses or tube socks, dressed similarly, could look as good), a photo series called “Acquaintances Holding My Plate of Meat,” and one great article called “Pork in the Promised Land,” that I may or may not have written. It’s a fun magazine and is a conversation starter and stopper. The print magazine and issue three is only available in stores, not on their website. It’s well worth it, if only for the sausage glamour shots.

I’m pleased to announce the winners from our most recent raffles on The Jew & The Carrot (drum roll please….)

Sharon Lebewohl won a framed print of Karl Schatz’s gorgeous photo and Joshua Lichtman will receive a copy of Sandor Katz’s book, Wild Fermentation.  Thanks to everyone who purchased a raffle ticket and left comments about their favorite fermented foods!  The Jew & The Carrot will offer many more chances to win healthy and sustainable goodies in 2008 - check back soon!

No, it’s not a joke:

The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe.

Does this give anyone else the sense of peace and hope for the world that it gave me?

On the Friday night of last year’s Hazon Food Conference I said, “put your hands up if you eat meat - but would not do so if you had to kill it yourself.” And a good number of hands went up.

Then I said: “put your hands up if you’re vegetarian - but you would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” And a different group of hands went up. And after a brief pause, everyone laughed.

They laughed because the two responses revealed what a self-selected group we were - and how fascinating our different distinctions. The first group were essentially saying, “I do like eating meat - but I know the process of killing it is awful - it’s actually so awful that if I had to kill it myself, I just wouldn’t eat meat.”

The second group were essentially saying “I’m vegetarian because I hate everything about how animals are raised and killed in our industrial food economy. But if I actually took responsibility for killing an animal myself, I would feel I was acting with integrity, and in accordance with my beliefs - and therefore, in that instance, I potentially would eat meat.”

And my response, when the laughter died down, was to say “Great: next year we’re going to shecht (slaughter according to kosher law) an animal here at the Food Conference..”

And people went: “Oooohhhhhh..”

Read more »

There have been some very interesting issues raised about kashrut in recent months on The Jew & The Carrot, particularly regarding the compatibility of traditional kashrut with the ethical, ecological, gastronomical, and cultural sensibilities of many of our readers and and contributors. And of course, there are the reports about the the blatant abuses of some of the kosher meat processors. However, while the kosher dietary rules (which I personally observe) are an important source and means of expression for Jewish values about food, they are not the only ones. There are also many rituals connected with the table and the seasons that have also shaped how we think about and eat our food.

Reading books at the dinner table is something most of us Jews take for granted, based on our experiences of the haggadot scripting our Passover seders, Tu bishvat haggadot for Tu Bishvat seders, benchers for birkat ha-mazon and zemirot after Shabbat and holiday meals. Read more »

I recently heard an interview with Native artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun during which he made a comment about the nature of food. He asked “When a Haida is eating a hotdog When does the hotdog become Haida (referring to the first nations band)? When it’s in his hand? When it’s in his mouth? or after he’s had a bowel movement.” Yuxweluptun was using this image as a metaphor for many cultural dilemmas. I ended up stuck on the Koan-like statement for a while trying to grapple with what about the metaphor hit me. I think it stems from the possibility of thinking about it from a literal perspective and then approach food and culture differently. When does what we eat become who we are, if it even ever does.
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Check out these great excerpts from a photo essay entitled, What the World Eats, from the book, Hungry Planet, by photographer (and fellow tribesman?) Peter Menzel.

And if you’re ever confused about what blessing to say when encountering a new food, you can use this new handy gadget, from The Jewish Learning Group!

Looking for the perfect gift for an eco-friendly, garden-obsessed (perhaps even going to Adamah?) graduate? Look no further! Food, gardening and dirt are *very* hot topics in the craft world these days.  Many beautiful options, like the one below, await you at www.etsy.com (search keywords: “garden” “farm” and “food” for great gift options)

1. Beautiful Tomato Print (great for decorating dorm rooms!)

* A ramp is a wild onion (Allium triccocum), found in eastern North America. It has flat leaves, and rounded clusters of white flowers. It can be eaten raw, or used in cooking. It is in season right now in the Northeast. Ramps are also referred to as wild leek.

We remember! We remember!
(We also recommend adding a little more wine to this recipe, for optimal construction qualities).

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Check out these amazing papercuts by April Greenberg, a Brooklyn-based artist whose painting, papercutting, drawing & sculpture is really stunning. April has also done Hazon’s NY Ride and is a stalwart member of Hazon’s webteam! See more of her work here.

These papercuts were inspired by Michael Pollan’s article in the New York Times “Unhappy Meals” (January 28, 2007). And - coming soon: Leah Koenig’s Exclusive Interview with Michael Pollan - stay tuned!
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