In December, Sarah Gross attended a workshop called “Bringing a Great Idea to Scale” at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn. When prompted to write down a few things she cared about most, Gross wrote “chocolate” and “helping animals.” She recalls, “The next morning as I walked my own rescued pitbull, Mocha, after a breakfast of chocolate (of course), my inspiration hit. ‘Rescue Chocolate,’ I muttered to myself over and over; the ideas were flying in and my fingers began to freeze as I wrote away on my iPhone. Mocha wondered why I wasn’t throwing the ball so well this morning. Anyway, the company took off from there!”

Rescue Chocolate donates 100 percent of its net profits to animal rescue groups, and all its packaging educates chocolate lovers about various issues related to the companion animal overpopulation crisis. All of its products are vegan and kosher/pareve. The company sells (or will sell) chocolate under such catchy names as Bow Wow Bon Bons, Peanut Butter Pit Bull, Pick Me! Pepper, The Fix, Foster-riffic Peppermint, Forever Mocha, and even “Don’t Passover Me” Bark.

“Don’t Passover Me” Bark, Rescue Chocolate’s only kosher-for-Passover product, is made to look like matzoh. Since it was added to the company’s Web site, it has been requested in every online order but one. Gross explained, “I want to have something that members of the Jewish community can really enjoy on this otherwise bland-food holiday.”

The company’s Web site adds, “This Passover, Rescue Chocolate reminds you not to ‘pass over’ the homeless pets that need you most! Go to your local animal shelter, seek out the animals that are not as likely to get homes: older pets, pets with medical conditions, and pets who have been waiting the longest! You will be getting a wonderful companion, and will absolutely save a life!”

Gross says that while “silly” brands like Hershey’s, Dove, and Godiva might put milk in their dark-chocolate products, most dark chocolates are vegan:

When I started my chocolate “journey,” OK, addiction, I wanted to try every vegan (as far as dairy-free, not beet sugar only) chocolate bar I could find. I didn’t suppose it would be many more than 10 or 20. A few years later and I’ve tried close to 400 different vegan chocolates! So, I feel like they’re not hard to find. Even in the last few years, the dark/gourmet chocolate scene has exploded nicely. Now you can always find a dairy-free chocolate whether at the corner bodega, the pharmacy or the grocery store!

Pareve and vegan dark chocolate might be easy to find, but if you want to help animals at the same time, Rescue Chocolate is probably your best bet.

I love hummus. I really do. I had some this morning for breakfast. I will probably have some with dinner. I seriously considered running away with my favorite hummus-seller in Machane Yehuda when I lived in Israel. But even I have never really considered the possibility of a sweet hummus. I mean, at its base hummus is mashed chickpeas. And when I think chickpeas I don’t think dessert.

Well lucky (?) for me, there are people in the world who don’t think the way I do when it comes to chickpeas. They saw hummus as a dessert-in-the-making. And they added some cocoa powder and some sugar (sugar! The humanity!) and they called it Chocolate Hummus.

Apparently the results are delicious and relatively healthy — you know, because of all of the CHICKPEAS that they smashed up with CHOCOLATE.

I’m sorry, but — WHA???? There are some ideas that should not be realized, people. When Herzl said, “If you will it, it is no dream,” he was not talking about hummus.

And these sweet hummus people haven’t stopped at chocolate. You can also buy the following flavored hummuses: pumpkin pie, toasted almond, peanut butter, caramel apple, and maple walnut. They’re made by a company called, I kid you not, Dessert Hummus.

Caramel Apple Hummus?! It’s just wrong.

To be fair, Health.com has reviewed these ridiculous flavors and calls them “brilliant.” This makes me think health.com is maybe not so healthy in the head.

Some things are sacred, people. God, for instance. Also, the Torah. And: HUMMUS. Stop messing with it. Jeesh!

Finally: I challenge someone to buy a case of this dessert hummus. Bring it to the MJL offices so we can try it and I can see if my gut revulsion is warranted or not.

(Cross-posted at Mixed Multitudes)

If my summer were a cookbook, it would be called What to Expect When You’re Expecting— Expecting Company, That Is, and It’s a Heat Wave.

Yes, welcome to life in the global warming oven.  We are on at least heat wave #3 of the summer here in usually temperate Portland, and I’ve had a potluck to attend or guests to host for all of them.  And while the hot weather makes me want to eat ice cream three meals a day, I know I really shouldn’t.

Especially not when “eating” means “bringing to a potluck where it will sit out in the sun.”

So what has been on the menu?  Lots, and I figured I’d share it in case you can’t stand the heat but still need to be in the kitchen.

Before we get too far along, remember, I am not generally somebody who follows recipes, so that means my offerings are going to be rather slapdash.

Occasion #1:  potluck 4th of July block party

Recipe #1: Watermelon Soup

Chop a seedless organic watermelon into chunks, removing the rind.  Puree in a blender with organic fat-free yogurt, plus juice (I used a cranberry blend that’s 100% juice and happened to be lurking in the back of our fridge), plus ground cinnamon and ground ginger.  Pour into a large bowl (it may take several blenders full to puree it all).  Mix in seedless grapes that have been quartered.  Chill.  Forget to garnish with mint before serving and enjoying.  Later, enjoy re-refrigerated leftovers with a shot of liqueur and think “I am a culinary genius!  When is Meryl Streep playing me????”

Occasion #2:  dinner party to which I promised to bring dessert

Recipe#2: Tofu chocolate mousse*

*adapted from The Complete Soy Cookbook by Paulette Mitchell (adapted means she has a great recipe but I am a chocolate fiend, so I up the cocoa powder and triple the recipe because seriously, has anyone ever made too much chocolate mousse?)

Combine 3 packages of firm shelf stable tofu (i.e., not the stuff that’s packed in water and refrigerated), 1 cup maple syrup, 1.25 cups cocoa powder, 1 Tablespoon vanilla and cinnamon to taste in a food processor.  Whir like mad.  Refrigerator before you eat it all yourself.

Occasion #3:  clients over for drinks in the backyard when it is 104 degrees

Recipes #3-#4: Cold soup

The laziest way to impress someone with cold soup:  pour several containers of shelf stable tomato soup into a large pot or bowl and chill. As you ladle each serving into a cup or bowl, garnish with tzatziki, which being lazy you bought in the deli section of the same market where you bought the soup 30 minutes before the guests arrived.

A slightly less lazy and more healthy way:  eyeball organic produce languishing in your fridge, google “raw food broccoli” and find this recipe.  Use way more garlic than it calls for, and also that shallot that, like your broccoli, has been languishing.

Occasion #4:  weekend at a friend’s house on the river

Recipes#5-#6: Herring Spread and Cabbage Salad

What kind of person always has a couple cans of herring in the cupboard?  The kind who can make this dish, so long as she picks up a couple of containers of cream cheese to go with.  Put ingredients in that trusty food processor.  Don’t add cocoa though, that would be gross.  A bissel horseradish, however, couldn’t hurt.  Or dill, if you’ll be with WASPs.  Refrigerate before departing the sweltering city, and keep on ice in the cooler as you drive to the slightly less sweltering country.

Upon arrival, shred 1.5 heads of cabbage (i.e. all that will fit in the host’s largest bowl, and if you have 1 green and 1 purple head, it looks great).  Mix in wasabi mayonnaise (available at Trader Joe’s and transported unopened so it wouldn’t go bad), raisins, and caraway seeds.  Don’t bother refrigerating; it’s so good you’ll just eat it now.

The weather’s supposed to break tomorrow, but just in case it doesn’t . . . what have you been serving on the sultriest days of summer?

I had my sweet “eureka!” moment in the health food store yesterday, more specifically in the canned goods aisle. With a glance at a can of coconut milk, all my non-dairy dessert dissatisfaction just fell away.

My devotion to dessert is almost religious. I believe that no good meal is complete without a sweet ending, and that chocolate sometimes does the job better than sex, drugs, or rock ‘n roll.  However, I often fall short in the dessert department when preparing a meat meal, meaning: my parve desserts aren’t spectacular.  I have been tinkering with non-dairy chocolate cake recipes for a while, but until now always felt somewhat dissappointed with the results.  One version wasn’t nearly chocolatey enough, another was throat-sticking dry, and how about the one with the weird sawdust aftertaste?…. And then, alas, there was this chocolate number.  Rich, endlessly chocolate, dense, and moist, this cake makes me retract my earlier declarations that baking without butter is just a waste of time.  The coconut milk gives this cake creaminess and heft without being coconutty in flavor, and the Trader Joe’s parve chocolate chips lends it a deep dark chocolate-ness.  The chocolate glaze is optional, but my theory is if you’re having dessert- have dessert.

Dairy-free CocoChoco Cake

2 3/4 c.  all purpose flour

1 c. cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 c. smart balance type spread

2 c. packed brown sugar

4 eggs

2/3 c. coconut milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1  semi-sweet choc chips

Grease bundt pan.  Preheat oven to 350F.  In a medium bowl sift together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda- set aside.  In a large bowl beat together smart balance spread and brown sugar.  Beat in eggs one at a time, and then the coconut milk and vanilla extract.  Gradually stir in flour mixture until well combined.  Add in chocolate chips.  Pour batter into bundt pan and bake in oven for 55-60 mins. or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Chocolate Glaze

1/2 c. coconut milk

1/2 c. chocolate chips

Heat coconut milk in pan over med.-high heat, add chocolate chips and stir until melted in.  Pour over cooled cake.

In my childhood, Shabbat never felt complete without Stella D’Oro cookies. For the uninitiated, these are dry cookies whose chief (or only) advantage is that they are parve (dairy free) and therefore can be eaten for dessert after a meat meal. I was especially partial to the Swiss Fudge flavor, which featured a dollop of chewy fudge in the middle of an otherwise-bland cookie ”if you nibbled away the outside first, you could enjoy a few bites of pure fudge at the end.

I have since stopped eating meat and have learned to bake, thereby eliminating the need for parve supermarket cookies, but still have a soft place in my heart for Stella D’Oro. I was therefore upset to hear recently that workers at the cookie-maker’s Bronx factory went on strike this past summer, and even more upset that this strike has attracted (as far as I can tell) virtually no notice in the Jewish community.

In 2006, Brynwood Partners bought Stella D’Oro from Kraft Foods. As soon as the contract of the existing 136 workers ran out in the summer of 2008, the new management demanded that the workers accept pay cuts of up to 26% and begin contributing to their health insurance plan. The workers scheduled to bear the brunt of this pay cut would be the women who package the cookies. (Brynwood has classified certain jobs – mostly those held by men as “skilled”
and subject to smaller paycuts) The workers walked out in August.

The Jewish community has already demonstrated an ability to change Stella D’Oro policy. A few years ago, the company decided, for financial reasons, to start using dairy ingredients in the aforementioned Swiss Fudge cookies. Jews around the country rose up as one and demanded justice. Faced with the possibility of losing its primary (or only) customer base, Stella D’Oro quickly reversed the decision to dairy-fy the cookies, and returned to purchasing parve fudge filling.

Will we harness this same economic power to save the livelihoods of 136 Bronx families?

How you can help:

1. Support the families of striking workers by making a contribution to the strike fund. Send donations to:

BCTGM Local 50
Attn: Joyce Alston, President
145 Talmadge Road, Suite 17
Edison, NJ 08817

2. E-mail Henrik Hartong, Jr., the senior partner of Brynwood, to ask him to maintain workers wages and health benefits. Let him know that you won’t be purchasing Stella D’Oro cookies in the meantime. 3. Got a craving for Swiss Fudge? Just don’t. . .

Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal was ordained this May at The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. For the past three years she has worked as an educator at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. She will be moving to El Paso, Texas this June with her husband Adam and her son Simon.

In my family, holiday food traditions are never about what you might think of as traditional holiday food.  Yes, we have matzah on Passover and apples and honey or Rosh Hashanah, but the traditions go deeper than that.  At our Passover seder, we must have potato kuglets, made each year by different members of the family.  No matter what else on the menu changes, the kuglets are how we know it is Passover, and not another festive meal.  Before the fast of Yom Kippur, our traditional family food is honey chicken and noodles.  Nothing else will get us through the fast, and no one thinks to suggest anything else. And then there is the Ten Commandments Cake on Shavuot.

There is power in traditions surrounding food, and there are numerous educational moments in every tradition that are built around food.  First, our food traditions, like any other family tradition, keep us together even when we can’t physically be together.  I know that next year, when I am not with my family for Yom Kippur, honey chicken will be on both our menus.  There is comfort knowing that although we will be apart, the food of our family will keep us connected.

Food traditions also provide opportunities for both Jewish and nutritional learning.  There has been lots of research and numerous articles touting the benefits of having kids in the kitchen.  Children who cook healthy food are more likely to try it, leading to a life of healthy eating.  Children who learn to cook in a kosher kitchen or who are exposed to the rhythm of Jewish life through food get the kinesthetic sensation of the Jewish year before they are old enough to comprehend all of its rules and patterns.

In our house, one of our most central food traditions is the Shavout Ten Commandments Cake.  Now this cake may not win points for nutrition, but in our family it is not Shavout without this cake.  We make it, and then we bring it to our synagogue picnic and share it with all our friends.  Each year, we discuss which strawberry on the cake stands for which commandment and it becomes a review of what we have just heard read aloud in synagogue.

Making this cake is simple.  You make a box of chocolate cake mix in a 9×13 inch pan (you could also make your own chocolate cake, if you were so inclined, but it is important that it be chocolate).  You then carve the cake into the shape of the two tablets and frost it with vanilla icing.  It is important not to be too neat, since the idea is that the crumbs of the chocolate cake will mix with the vanilla icing, creating an effect that looks like stone.  Right before you are ready to serve (the cake will get soggy otherwise), cut some strawberries into small pieces and use them to outline the edges of the cake, and to make a line between the two tablets.  Finally take 10 whole or half strawberries, depending on the size, and place five on each tablet.

Bring it to your local Shavout picnic and share it with friends.  It will be a hit, even if there are no kids around to appreciate your new tradition.

So we only have a few days left of Pesach… and I happen to be quite happy about this!  It’s not that I don’t understand Pesach or why we don’t eat leavened things – I do.  I actually think the story of Pesach reminds us, as Jews, of some important lessons.  The reminder that I find to be most poignant is that we cannot consider ourselves free as long as others are oppressed.

Sorry for the digression – now back to food… I know some people find cooking during Pesach to be a fun challenge but I find it inconvenient.  As a vegetarian I rely (probably too much) on foods which are not considered “Kosher l’Pesach”, i.e. pasta, rice, bread, soy items, etc, so during Pesach I end up eating lots of matzoh pizza.  For anyone not familiar with matzoh pizza it is a basic combination of matzoh, tomato sauce and cheese which is then toasted (do not microwave because your matzoh pizza will be soggy).  I suppose one could come up with many variations to the aforementioned matzoh pizza recipe (please feel free to share your favorite) but no matter what it’s still matzoh pizza and is not even close to real pizza.

As you can infer from the previous paragraphs my brainstorming of what my boyfriend and I were going to eat during Pesach was a bit of a depressing process for me, however; there was one beacon of hope!  Early last week a friend emailed me for my matzoh crunch recipe.  I had made it last year and brought it to my office (filled with mostly Jews) and this friend like it so much that she went home that night and made it for her boyfriend.  He liked it so much that he requested it again this year!  I don’t know how but I until I received her email I had totally forgotten about the matzoh crunch.

This recipe is quick, easy, delicious and has brightened up my Pesach!  Some complain that it’s too sweet so I tried a variation this year by sprinkling the top with some citrus vanilla fleur de sel.  Being a fan of the salty/sweet combo I really enjoyed the variation.  I promise, you won’t regret making this treat for the last few days of Pesach!

Matzoh Crunch

5 plain matzohs

1 cup (2 sticks) local organic unsalted butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

about 8 oz (3/4 a standard bag) chocolate chips (I didn’t used Kosher l’Pesach chocolate because I don’t keep it that strictly but feel free to use it if you do keep strictly)

a few sprinkles of fleur de sel (optional)

other toppings such as nuts (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.  Line a large edged baking sheet with foil making sure to cover edges.  Line bottom of sheet with parchment paper.  This is important since the crunch can get very sticky.  Place matzohs on prepared sheet (you may have to break the fifth matzoh in half to make it fit).

Melt butter and brown sugar in a saucepan and let boil for a few minutes until thick.  Stir constantly.  Once thick remove from heat and immediately pour over matzohs spreading with knife to cover if necessary.

Place in oven and bake for about 10 mins.  Check matzoh after 5 mins to ensure it isn’t burning.

Remove from oven and sprinkle evenly with chocolate chips.  Let stand 5 mins so that chocolate chips melt.  Spread chocolate chips to cover matzohs.  Immediately sprinkle fleur de sel or other toppings if using.

Let cool fully and break into pieces.  Store in an airtight container.

A new article of mine appears today in The Atlantic called “A Seder Different From All Other Seders,” exploring the tragic demise of Barton’s, the iconic Jewish chocolate company.

In typical recession-era corporate fashion, in the late winter of 2009 a Barton’s Candy salesman, planning his annual Passover sales, had heard about a round of layoffs at the company. The news was followed by a more jarring discovery: the chocolate company had canceled its production for its most important time of the year, Passover. The salesman called Menachem Lubinsky–kosher industry insider and editor of the Kosher Today newsletter–in tears, lamenting his professional fate as well as that of the iconic chocolate company.

The salesman’s fears were well founded. Cherrydale Farms, Barton’s parent company, officially ended the beloved chocolate brand’s 71-year run on March 31, 2009. No representatives responded to this reporter’s inquiries, though a secretary confirmed the date of death.

Barton’s, or Barton’s Bonbonniere as it was known under its original owners, is mostly remembered fondly as that chocolate from Passover. Its chocolate desserts had been seen as a near-addendum to the seder plate along with Manischewitz wine.

“People living in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s couldn’t think of life without Barton’s,” Lubinsky told me in what might have been an exaggeration. But Barton’s tins of Almond Kisses did tempt seder-goers for years, and generations of Jewish children sold Barton’s candies as fundraisers. This night–the first in more than half a century that Barton’s will not be present–will be particularly different from all other nights.

Click here to continue reading.

Pick out your favorite fruits, nuts, dried fruit, and even kosher for Passover marshmallows. I used bananas, dried apricots, walnuts, and almonds. You can find chocolate fondue recipes here and here. Get creative, invite family and friends to join you, and eat some homemade dessert for Pesach!