Every year, I host a seder that can only be described as unorthodox in every sense of the term.  The guests are usually folks who might not otherwise observe the holiday, and I’m happy to gather them into my home to pray, eat, sing, and think about what freedom means and what we ought to do to make more of it in the world.

I’m so happy to gather them that in the days leading up to seder, I start freaking out about what we’re running short of because I’ve invited so many guests.  Thus comes the last minute run for cutlery, dishes, glassware . . . every year it’s something different. The panic, however, remains the same.

As an environmentalist, I don’t want to use anything disposable.  And as an iconoclast, I’ve never much cared if my cutlery, dishes, or glassware match.  No one has ever mistaken me for Martha Stewart, nor mistaken my hand-painted plastic seder plate (strategically placed to cover the most indelible blemishes on my perpetually wine-stained table cloth) for hers (personally, if I have to go Stewart, I’d rather be lumped in with Jon than with Martha).

The most motley collection of items I put out for seder are my napkins, which I’ve acquired at various yard sales and Goodwill stores over the years.  Color, fabric, size . . . there is no consistency.  Until this year.

Because I just became the proud owner of a new sewing machine!  Motel and Tzeitel were not any more excited about their new addition than I am about mine.  Although as a tailor, Motel was probably better positioned to use his.

Given my limited sewing skills, my first project focused on the auto-embroidery feature, which I used to inscribe hostess-with-the-mostess messaging on the napkins.  There’s something meditative about these sort of crafty projects, and it was really nice to take some time in the holiday-prep madness to do something creative, pro-recycling, and focused on the essence of hospitality.

Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for someone to spill some matzah ball soup.

Which reminds me, do I have enough soup spoons this year?

post dedicated to Ezra Marbach

When I think of March 17^th I think of green. Not olive green, celadon, pine or lime — I’m talking clover. On St. Patrick’s Day in the US you can find things such as bagels, pastries, beer, and flowers dyed clover green in celebration of this day. It’s meant as a shout out to Irish American solidarity and pride much like the blue coloring used on cupcakes is for the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day. (I just had to bring up those blue cupcakes, regrettably they hold a special place in my culinary heart.) With all of these thoughts on green and blue I thought I’d explore the connection between food and color.

In Oliver Sacks’s novel An Anthropologist on Mars he includes a chapter called The Case of the Colorblind Painter. This chapter tells the story of an adult artist who became color blind as a result of an auto accident. One of the ailments that the man suffers from, as a result of the accident, is a repulsion toward many foods and eating. The book states, “He founds foods disgusting due to their grayish, dead appearance and had to close his eyes to eat.” The book goes on to say that closing his eyes and imagining the food’s proper color didn’t help enough and he began eating foods like rice and black olives that appeared more normal with his impaired color palette.

There is something called the Rainbow Diet which for all intents and purposes is a fad diet. However, it does espouse the virtue of eating foods in a variety of colors because they provide you with different vitamins and nutrients. i.e. carrots are high in vitamin A as are pumpkins, peas and broccoli. Vitamin C is found in cabbage, spinach and peppers among many others. In fact, many scientists believe that humans are attracted to foods because of their color. Apparently our ancestors were innately attracted to colorful foods as a survival strategy. Often colorful foods meant the promise of usable energy and health promoting vitamins.

So why even after reading books by Alice Waters, Barbara Kingsolver, and Michael Pollan who talk about the virtues of the farmer’s market and the produce section in my supermarket am I still attracted to the cakes with the artificial blue frosting? Because it’s not my fault! The answer is survival of the fittest. I was pre-programmed to like yellow bananas that offer me potassium, juicy oranges that give me vitamin c, and blue artificial frosting that assign me… hyperactive behavior!

With all the jokes about Jews loving Chinese food, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a Jewish version of the Chinese zodiac calendar.  Now, by inputting your year of birth, you can find out which Jewish deli food (lox, bagel, black & white cookie…you get the picture) that you are cosmically aligned with.  Moreover, once you know your sign, you can (conveniently) purchase *stuff* with a picture of your sign on it.

Personally, I’m a little bit annoyed/amazed by the continuing onslaught of Judeo-kitsch out there in the world.  Doesn’t that sort of thing get old to anyone else but me?  Then again, maybe I’m just cynical because I’m a blintz.  (It figures…)

Get the whole dish and find out your sign here.

(hat tip Daniel Belasco)

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.

JC: On a recent interview for the radio show “Beyond Organic,” you mentioned that you partly wrote the book, Fields of Plenty, to demonstrate that farming was not, “a form of lowly drudgery but a fine art and a craft and a noble profession.” Do you think that’s something that still needs to be proven to American people?

MA: I do.  I think that a lot has certainly changed in the last few years in terms of people’s awareness around all things food and agriculture, but I think the changes that have occurred are not the kind of changes we need to really structurally shift the system as a whole.

We currently have more cheerleaders than we have participators, and the fundamental problems with the food system are not going to change until we have more than one and a half percent doing the work of farming. So I’m excited to see a movement that I’ve been involved with for so long finally getting some attention, but I’m concerned at the same time.

So people need to be growing food instead of just getting it from their local coop?

Absolutely.  You can’t have a sustainable food system when only one and a half percent of the population is doing the work.  It’s not going to work if everyone’s still sitting behind their computer screens.

Do you consider that to be the goal of the work that you do?

Well it’s my current rant [laughs]. You have to look at this from a lot of different angles and understand that people are awakening at very different levels and we have to support them at whatever level they’re at. First and foremost I grow food and I supply my local community with food, but I also hope that the day will come when individuals will put farmers out of business by growing more for themselves.

You’ve worked in photography and writing and journalism, and you’ve done a lot of educational work. How did so many angles of working in agriculture end up as a part of your life?

My only formal post-high school education was in the visual arts – photography. When I came to agriculture, I discovered something pretty amazing, which was that the instincts of artists, specifically around observation, the observation of one’s world, interpreting it, in a way is very similar to the instincts and some of the fundamental skills required for good farming: observing the world of the farm and knowing how to interpret it, what to do with it.

I’ve been kind of working on a project on the art of farming. It’s really in its very, very, very preliminary stages, but it would include the work of a lot of people, probably from different parts of the world, who are farming but who are also interpreting their world through different art forms, whether it be writing or photography or painting, and the goal is to have a book and probably a traveling exhibition.

So how did you get into farming?

It’s the last thing I ever thought I’d be doing.  I ended up joining an agrarian commune in my late teens in California and within a couple of months I was managing a hundred acre organic pear and apple orchard in the high desert valley for the commune. I had this five-year, incredibly intensive, amazing immersion experience in agriculture that one could never pay for, and I came out of that with a lot of skills. By the end of that experience I was completely turned on by agriculture.

What have been  were some of your most successful educational projects?

Well, I have some favorites of course. We used to run a three day urban agriculture workshop in California. We provided air fare and lodging and tuition for people from all over the country, primarily from lower income urban communities, and we did this wonderful workshop and the success stories out of that have been fantastic.

What were some of the success stories?

There are folks working all over the country doing great work, in Chicago, New York city, amongst native communities in the southwest, using food and farming as the stepping stone for all kinds of social and ecological change.

You know, you start off in your twenties and thirties trying to find out who you are and wanting to make your own mark on the world and then something happens later on and you start to want to see other people succeed. That’s pretty cool to see happening. It isn’t that the ego isn’t still intact and strong, it’s that you’re more willing to share it.

Chipping away at that 98% that doesn’t farm.

Exactly.

Do you have any personal Jewish food traditions that you could tell us about?

I live on an island in British Columbia. I almost would say that the place that I live has a higher population of Jewish people involved with the land than maybe any other place in North America.

I went to a Seder on the island, the first time I’d been to one in years, and it was really fun. We brought products from the farm for the meal and we grow a number of things that are used in the ceremony like parsley and horseradish. There’s a wonderful Hannuka celebration on the island, and the same family has been organizing that every year and they do this vast amount of potato latkes! Apparently they work on it for days.

It’s interesting hearing you talk about it. When I hear you mention potatoes at Hannuka and parsley at Pesach it’s making me think, of course potatoes because they’re in cold storage, and of course parsley in spring.  So what’s it like to celebrate the New Year in September/October as a farmer?

That’s an interesting question because you know I was raised as a Jew but I also was raised in a community where I experienced quite a significant amount of prejudice, and so as a young person I actually learned that it was safer for me to assimilate. I spent a lot of years not referring to myself as Jewish, and interestingly enough, in the last few years I’m doing some interviews like this and some programs that are related to the Jewish tradition, and it’s kind of like coming out of the closet.

I think that all of us are products of so many layers of familial and cultural upbringing. I have the agricultural background; I have the roots in Judaism. I am not a practicing or religious Jew – I am a very spiritual person – but it’s interesting for me to just now be discovering all the different threads and how they connect together.

One of the things I love about the Jewish tradition is the timing of the holidays, that their origins are based on the cycles of the land. I don’t know how many Jews actually realize that, but I certainly am aware of that because my life revolves around those same cycles. See, now I’m getting tons of ideas of what to talk about in December.

Related Posts:
CSA’s say “Cheese Please”
Interview with Ari Hart
Interview with Ella Heeks
Interview with Adam Gollner
Meet Sandorkraut: and Interview with Sandor Katz
Interview with Michael Pollan

When it comes to honey pots, you can go with something traditional and very jew-y:

OR…….

…try something kind of homey and rustic:

I personally like these modern and more abstract pots:

And then there are the more whimsical options like a pomegranate…

or a flower.

For a fancier table, here are some more formal possibilities:

For tons more options, try the Jewish Museum’s online shop or check out the handmade options on etsy and get one from a local artist.

Now, what kind of honey goes into your specially chosen pot? You might be tempted by the plastic golden bear on the shelves in your supermarket, but there are way better options out there.

I love wildflower honey, and orange blossom is famously fantastic, but there are tons of different varieties available, from bamboo honey, to soybean honey. In general, the darker the honey, the stronger the flavor.

You can also get honeycomb which is really fun, but a little difficult to deal with, or whipped honey, which is thicker and spreadable. The National Honey Board has a honey locator feature on their website that lets you search for honey from a particular location, or a certain kind of honey. And don’t forget to look for honey at your local farmer’s market! This year my family will be having wildflower honey from Laney Honey farms—it’s certified kosher, and I picked it up at the Nashville farmer’s market.

Wishing you a sweet and creative New Year!

Thanks to the Jewish Museum for the inspiration behind this post.

This Shavuot I baked, with the assistance of my son Max, a siete cieli (“Seven Heavens”) challah. It’s become a regular tradition in our family, along with cutting roizelekh (“roses”) from origami paper, to bake this Mt. Sinai-shaped round challah adorned with various symbols of Torah and revelation – the 2 tablets of the covenant, a ladder, a fish, a bird, and a hamsa.

Max made the fish that you can see in the picture. There’s an excellent, illustrated description of how to construct the “seven heavens” challah in the cookbook by Rabbi Robert Sternberg, The Sephardic Kitchen, though I don’t use his recipe for challah. Rather, I use my favorite whole wheat challah recipe from Marcy Goldman’s Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking. By the way, this is a fantastic cookbook. I have yet to bake a recipe from it that I haven’t liked. The whole wheat challah recipe follows below the break. I have also adapted this Shavuot hallah to celebrate the end of the term with my Wheaton College First Year Seminar “Rituals of Dinner” students, adding other, more contemporary dough symbols, i.e., a mortarboard hat and diploma. I mix and knead Marcy Goldman’s recipe for whole wheat challah as per her instructions in a bread machine, and then shape it, and bake it in the oven. The quantities are

1 1/2 cups warm water
4 teaspoons yeast (plus pinch of sugar)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup oil
3 eggs
2 cups whole wheat flour
4 cups unbleached white flour
1 tbs. salt
1 beaten egg for eggwash

First I proof the yeast in the water with the pinch of sugar in the bread machine container. Then I add the rest of the sugar and wet ingredients, and then the flour and salt. I set the bread machine to the knead and rise cycle. I usually have to “help” the machine a bit by stirring the wet and dry ingredients together with a spoon, since the container for my bread machine works best with less than six cups of flour. You may need to adjust the amount of flour depending on the humidity.

Once the cycle is complete, I shape the bread, either into two braided loaves for Shabbat hallot, or into one big round Mt. Sinai shaped loaf following Robert Sternberg’s instructions in the Sephardic Kitchen. I let them rise for @another hour on pans lined with parchment paper until doubled in size, brush with the beaten egg (and for the Shabbat loaves, sprinkle with sesame seeds), and bake in a 350 degree oven for @30-35 minutes, or until done.

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.

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.

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!

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?