If you are looking to build a “green” home or are hoping to find organic cosmetics then the Go Green Expo might be the place for you this weekend in Philadelphia. This Expo is billed as a trade show for people who want to learn about environmentally friendly goods and services for use in modern everyday living. Apparently the idea for the Expo came from one of the organizers, a professional trade show producer, after he watched the film An Inconvenient Truth. Sweet, eh?

Chanukah gelt always seems like a good idea at the beginning of December, but these days, the chocolate just doesn’t seem worth fighting with the foil to eat. Similar to Rhea Yablon Kennedy‘s experience, we wanted to find another way to use up our leftovers. When my roomies came back from a trip to Ohio they were inspired to make Buckeyes – the unofficial candy of the state of Ohio. Buckeyes are a tree nut and the candies do resemble the naturally occurring buckeye. Rachel, who hails from Cincinnati, referenced the Isaac M. Wise Temple Sisterhood cookbook for recipes. Not 1, but 2 recipes can be found (pages 113 and 114 for those of you who have the 2001 edition of the cookbook).  The Hazon office sure enjoyed these tasty treats…Buckeyes are basically peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.

Several years ago, Rabbi Deborah Prinz and her husband Rabbi Mark Hurvitz were traveling in Bayonne, France.  While glancing at a placard in one of the museums they were visiting, Rabbi Prinz was shocked to read that Jews had brought the fabrication of chocolate to France in the 17th century.  As she would come to realize, Jews played a vital role in of early production and distribution of chocolate in Europe.  Even as far back as Christopher Columbus whom some have speculated might have been Jewish and some of his crew may have been converso. If true, then it would have been Jews who brought cacao to Europe.

When dark chocolate finally crossed over into the mainstream,  I’m sure I wasn’t the only foody to rejoice at its recent widespread availability (heck, even Hersheys & Mars have dark versions of most of their candy bars now).

Well, it seems that salt is about to become this year’s dark chocolate. As early as 2006, salted caramel seemed to be taking the dessert world by storm. But when I walked into my local Starbucks this week and ordered up a Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, I knew that salt had reached the big leagues. How was it, you ask? It was 500 calories-worth of swooning, Homer-Simpson-like moaning, beverage ecstacy. Salt + chocolate = GOOD.

In a beautiful bit of Jew/Carrot synchronicity, I read in this weeks’s Torah portion the story of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt when she turned back to witness the destruction of her hometown of Sodom.  Still buzzing from the hot chocolate, I did a little digging (salt-mining?) into the significance of salt in Jewish tradition.

(Cross posted at Mixed Multitudes)

Came across this awesome article about a Swiss choclatier named Blaise Poyet who has created a new chocolate inspired by John Calvin to honor Calvin’s 500th birthday:

He acknowledges the difficulty of representing theological ideas in taste, “But the key thing for Calvin is the glory of God, his excellence, his perfection. So we chose a chocolate that we chocolatiers find rare and flawless…” The Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches actually approached Poyet: one must hope they are satisfied:

“The first layer is based on a classic smooth and runny praline mix but we have “reformed” it by using crunchy caramelised hazelnuts, and salt from the Swiss Alps to make the praline slightly savoury.
The second layer uses a “chocolate Grand Cru from Bolivia”, made from 68 percent cocoa paste, to represent Calvin’s theology of the glory and perfection of God….”

Calvin’s hellfire beliefs are not, alas, represented by burnt bits, but “we have used a caramel made from Swiss cream that that slightly softens the chocolate to represent in a discreet way this love for one’s neighbour” Finally, a taste of lemon verbena, a perennial, represents Calvin’s ability to sow, to plant and to make things grow.

How completely awesome. It got us thinking at the MJL offices about how we’d represent various Jewish leaders in dessert format. Here’s what we’ve got so far:
Theodore Herzl–Lemon Meringue Pie
Because meringue seems to defy logic and gravity to become a sweet and wonderful thing. Also, you have to labor long and hard over it.

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…

Okay, okay – so Halloween isn’t exactly a “Jewish holiday.” But considering that the dominant theme on October 31st is chocolate (witches and goblins decidedly take a back seat to Snickers Bars and M&Ms), it seems like a perfectly good time to celebrate Jewish and Israeli chocolate makers.  Over the last few years, the chocolate industry has grown significantly in Israel, with many new boutique chocolate stores and manufacturers popping up around the country.  And in America, Jews continue to contribute to the industry, creating some of the world’s most renowned chocolate.

Below the jump, we’ve compiled a list of some of today’s most innovative Jewish chocolate makers – folks like Chuck Siegel, the official chocolate maker for Google, who started his company in the kitchen of the San Francisco JCC – and Netanya’s Choconoy, an Israeli company with a special mission.

Read below for the whole list…

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.“ - Benjamin Franklin, July 1779

Jeff Morgan is a man with a mission. As if being an author, winemaker and wine educator (not to mention a former professional musician) doesn’t keep him busy enough, he is also on a quest to change the way the Jewish community thinks about – and drinks – wine.

He and his business partner, Leslie Rudd, are the creators of Covenant Wines, a kosher wine company that strives to “harness quality commensurate with the rich and profound story of the Jewish people.” That might sound like a lot to swallow, especially considering that Jews tend to be linked with a legacy of barely drinkable kosher wines (ahem, Manischewitz). But the former West Coast editor of Wine Spectator magazine is on to something sweet.

I spoke with Jeff right before Yom Kippur to hear more about his vino-philosophy. He shared his thoughts on the current state of kosher wine, where it’s headed, and why consumers should think twice before reaching for a Mevushal bottle.

Want to WIN Jeff’s amazing kosher wine? Tell us your favorite wine memory to be entered into a drawing to win two bottles of Covenant’s Red C Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006. This wine is made from grapes grown on a 2-acre parcel of land in Napa Valley and aged for 18 months in French oak barrels. Total retail value, $84. (Only one comment per person will be entered into the drawing – please comment by Sunday, October 19.

The various ethical, environmental, and cultural issues surrounding honey have been considered and discussed here on The Jew and the Carrot, both in posts and comments.  Leah has explored whether honey is “kosher” for vegans, and wondered if there’s “any ethics-based diet that *doesn’t* have a little bit of hypocrisy clouding up its ideals.”  Michael Croland from HeebnVegan explained that the issue does little to promote veganism, and pointed us in the direction of this Satya Mag article on the subject.  Meanwhile, Rabbi Shmuel has suggested that we should critically re-examine the Rosh HaShanah custom of dipping apples in honey, and explore alternatives such as maple syrup, while Rabbi Debbie Prinz joined the conversation with a lip smacking guest post on how we can integrate chocolate into our Rosh HaShanah celebrations.

Rather than continue the debate on whether honey is vegan, eco-kashrut, or even just kosher (Leah notes that she has always “puzzled over how eating a food created by a decidedly non-kosher creature could be considered okay for the Tribe”), I’m offering a number of delicious, vegan, kosher, and organic ideas and recipes for a sweet new year.

Thanks to Rabbi Debbie Prinz for this guest post.  Rabbi Prinz is currently researching Jews’ historical and contemporary connections to the chocolate industry.  Find more about her work at Jews on the Chocolate Trail.

A serious chocolate lover has to wonder why Judaism today has neither serious ritual celebrations nor customs using good chocolate, especially at Rosh Hashanah when we emphasize the sweetness we anticipate and long for in the coming New Year. On Rosh Hashanah, we greet each other with the phrase, Shanah Tovah u’Metukah! “a good and sweet year.” We taste this sweetness through the apples and honey we eat, through the raisins we add to the customary round challah, through the honey cake we bake, or through the taiglach (small donuts) we drown in honey. But, where’s the chocolate?

After all, chocolate induces a spiritual state that might open us to the meditative, contemplative and introspective mood we seek at the High Holydays. As the manager of a fancy French chocolate store in Manhattan confessed to me, she has a metaphysical response to eating an intense 99% cocoa French chocolate just before she studies from the mystical text known as the Zohar.

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.

The Jew & The Carrot reader, Naomi, recently asked:

“I was surprised to see Hydrox at ShopRite the other day, in ‘vintage’-style packaging. I had thought they were defunct. Why would they be coming back now?”

Good question, Naomi. As I wrote back in April, Hydrox – the chocolate sandwich cookie loved by kiddush-hopping Jews everywhere – was discontinued in 2003, just a few years after their fiercest competitor, Oreo, went kosher. According to “The Hydrox Cookie [Fan] Page,” Hydrox, which were first made in 1908 by Sunshine bakery actually preceded Oreos by four years. But Nabisco’s version quickly became the platonic ideal of a sandwich cookie, leaving Hydrox in a perpetual position of runner up.

Now, after 5 years off the market, Kellogg (which owned the brand at the time of its demise) is bringing Hydrox back to the Jews people.

I’m sure many of my fellow foodies and followers of R. Cookie Monster (aka the “Om-nom-nom Rebbe”) eagerly devoured David Leite’s recent article in the NYTimes about his quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

According to the insider tips he got from such experts as fellow M.O.T. Maury Rubin (owner of City Bakery, where you can get the best hot chocolate this side of Babette’s Feast), the key to really great chocolate chip cookies isn’t the chocolate (although that’s crucial, of course), or the dough, but allowing the dough to rest for at least 24 hours. That’s right, the key to great chocolate chip cookies is right there in Genesis 2:2!

Yesterday, I had brunch at my friend’s apartment. It was a steamy Sunday morning – the kind where it could rain any second and your hair (or at least my hair) becomes simultaneously flat, frizzy, and full of weirdly-placed curls. French toast and eggs seemed too heavy for such a morning. But luckily, at some point in the last couple of months, my friend drank the raw foodism Kool Aid – and so had a lovely spread of light, heat-free vegetable dishes including one she called “mock eggs Florentine” (thick-cut tomatoes, sea salt and guacamole), fresh orange juice and a cucumber, lemon, and lime-aid and “strawberries and cream” (soaked cashews whipped in a food processor with agave syrup and vanilla).

During our meal, I felt virtuous and close to the Rambam’s advice: “In summer, one should eat cold foods without excessive amounts of spices…” (Mishna Torah). But as tasty and cooling as our breakfast was, my body is not accustomed to such carb and dairy-less fare. So while my friend felt totally satiated, by about 2pm it was still hot and I had a screaming headache. In an attempt to regain culinary balance after my morning of detoxing, I baked a chocolate buttermilk cake – decadent, sweet, and hot from a steaming oven. As they say, everything in moderation – even vegetables.

Recipe after the jump.