Edible wild plants have been an essential part of the local diet here in the Galilee going back to the stone age hunters and gatherers.  I have learned from neighbors in the nearby Bedouin villages which plants are good to eat, where to find them, and how to prepare them.  One of the staples, which is considered a seasonal delicacy, is wild chicory – known in Arabic as elet, and in Hebrew as olesh.  It can be found around the edges of fields – a low-growing starburst of scalloped leaves.  And it is considered to be extremely healthy – good for “cleaning the blood”, as my Bedouin friends have explained.

Going out and gathering is not as commonly practiced in the traditional Arab cultures of the Galilee as it once was – yet the taste for elet remains.  Now enterprising farmers have started to cultivate elet and other edible wild plants, and sell them in the local Arab green grocers.

Passover is a natural time to take an “environmental inventory” of the chametz in our world and to be mindful of the simple lives our ancestors led in the desert in their pursuit of freedom. Chametz is the Hebrew term for any of the five basic biblical grains which traditionally observant Jews remove from their homes. These include wheat, rye, oats, barley, and spelt—that have been mixed with water and allowed to ferment.

When our ancestors were dwelling in the desert, they had no choice but to live simply. In our day, simplicity has come to mean conservation, not using more than you need, and not being wasteful. Jewish law prohibits wasteful consumption. When we waste resources, we are violating the law of bal tashchit—Do not destroy. (Deuteronomy 20: 19-20).

Matzah itself is a symbol of simplicity and humility, and is a metaphor for getting back to basics and our natural selves. It is in contrast to our leavened or puffed up, over-inflated selves caught up in accumulation and over-consumption.

For many Jews, the coming of Pesach marks a great time for a spring cleaning- both internal and external. Dishes are changed, cabinets are cleared, homes are aired and dusted. We also work on removing spiritual chametz- ego, ungratefulness, self-righteousness, etc.

But there’s another type of spring cleaning that’s popular this time of year among Jews and non-Jews alike; namely, cleansing.   Cleanses range from juice fasts to detox diets to colon flushes and beyond, and devotees claim to gain energy, lose weight and get their bodies ready for spring.  On the other hand, skeptics argue that these types of cleanses do more harm than good for our bodies and the ultimate positive effect is only mental.

On March 24th the Brian Lehrer Show had a segment titled, “Spring Cleaning“, where dietician Lisa Sasson took the anti-cleanse position. Also featured was Joshua David Stein, whose New York Press article, “The Dirty World of Cleanses“  had much to say about this popular spring ritual.

Thanks so much to Yiska Obadia for her great Guest Post.  Yiska is a licensed acupuncturist currently practicing in NYC. She has a background in massage therapy and received her undergraduate degree in Holistic Health Studies.  A lifelong passion for nutrition and a 70 lb. personal weight-loss have inspired her work. In addition to working with individuals one on one, Yiska leads Transformative Nutrition Groups in NYC.  More information can be found on her website.

* Photo by Daniel Albanese

I hope you’re feeling that early spring feeling, where your energy starts to lighten and brighten, springing your creative life force into action. Many people begin to feel this enlivening occur as buds grow on the trees around us and the days get lighter, longer, and warmer. Some though may feel like they are still carrying around the weight and heaviness of winter, physically and/or emotionally. I know I was. Hence the notion of spring cleaning… I don’t think it’s an accident that both Lent and Passover occur during this time of year, both holidays encouraging the clearing out that makes space for the spirit of rebirth to spring forth.

Spring cleaning can happen on many levels. On the physical level alone, a simple elimination of processed and refined foods and chemicals from the diet can work miracles. As always, if you feel stuck, change something up and movement is bound to follow. You might consider giving up alcohol, sugar, and/or coffee for a month. Note: not forever! Try switching it up with an herbal detox tea instead. For allergy sufferers, this elimination can be profoundly beneficial. By diminishing unnecessary stressors, our bodies are more apt to handle the stress of pollen and other seasonal allergens with greater ease.

I know, I know, you were out late tonight. Fully costumed. Dancing in circles. Taking shots. Forgetting the difference between Haman and Mordechai.

And now you’ve got a headache like a chorus of groggers spinning between your temples, a stomach ache like an overstuffed poppyseed hamantashen and even though its still Purim, you’ve got to go to work!

With your troubles in mind, I present to you the following five food ideas for curing a killer Purim hangover.  Though there is certainly some debate as to whether these foods will actually work, I doubt you have much to lose in trying.

Open up your kitchen cupboard, grab a handful of common herbs, fruits and vegetables and voila, your own unregulated pharmacy. On Friday, Tamar Lieb shared her knowledge of the medicinal uses of common plants in the workshop “Kitchen Wisdom for Common Ailments.” To use herbs as medicine, you can do everything from eating them to dissolving them in water, honey, sugar, or oil to extract beneficial properties from fresh and raw plants. I’ve included her long list of beneficial herbs and their properties here (it’s even alphabetized!)

To use waters for your herbal preparation, you can make an infusion (pouring boiling water over delicate things like flowers or leaves) a decoction (boiling harder things like bark or certain dried roots), or use steam. The smell of a plant is its volatile oils escaping, so when you’re making tea, Lieb suggested, keep it covered while it steeps. In a steam bath, made by pouring boiling water over your more delicate herbs (think the pizza spices – oregano, rosemary, basil, thyme – for a cold) and then placing your face, under a towel and over the bowl while you breath in the oily, aromatic steam.

Thanks to Yigal Deutscher for this guest post.

We have just begun the Sefirat HaOmer, counting off the direct correlation between Pesach & Shavuot, two celebrations separated by a string 50 days long. These are two moments in time, interwoven, yet at polar opposites. On Day 1, we have left bread behind, as Chametz. On Day 50, we are elevating bread as an offering in the Holy Temple, a sacrifice unique to the day of Shavuot. A serious transformation has just taken place.

The link between our starting point and our destination goal is food, bread in particular. This corridor of time marks the counting of grain ripening…from the start of the barley harvest to the start of the wheat harvest.

What do parsley, pickles, and charoseth have in common?  They constitute the exhaustive list of Jewish foods that fit neatly into a raw food diet.  The remaining arsenal of heavy, noodle-egg-and-shmaltz-filled dishes that dominate the world of traditional Jewish cuisine don’t exactly make the cut.

But now – proving that there is indeed an online community for every interest – there is a new Yahoo group for raw foodists who love Jewish food.  Members will swap Jewishly-inspired recipes created through vegan and raw techniques.  While I can see how borscht and hummus would be fairly straight forward to make raw, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my mind around an uncooked matzah ball…

There is a farmer’s market that is set up every Wednesday, and now that I no longer am a member of a CSA, I try to visit this market weekly. It’s a nice break in the afternoon, and it’s exciting to see what is available and to think ahead to plan my meals. I discovered two years ago how much I like patty pan squash, and for some reason it isn’t being sold in my supermarket. So, I was very excited a few weeks ago when I saw it at the farmer’s market! It’s easy to prepare it – just steam them in a pot of water until it gets soft. It’s a delicious summer squash.

I’d like to give a hearty hand of appreciation to the fresh fig.  Although their dried counterparts usually rule in America, there is nothing like slippery sweet seeds of a fig bursting through its soft purple skin. 

Figs generally grow in steamy climates, which is perhaps why biting into a fresh fig immediately evokes the warm, ancient air and sweet soil of the Mediterranean – and why these gems are one of the seven species of Israel:

Frequent readers of ‘The Jew and the Carrot’ know that Hazon’s staff recently returned from a Cleanse on Fire Island with author Halé Sofia Schatz. It was, to say the least, a unique experience. Below is an excerpt from my post about it on Baking and Books :

It is 4:49 PM. I just got home and wheeled the dolly piled with three boxes and a cooler, a huge suitcase filled with knives, cutting boards, platters, pots, pans, an immersion blender, citrus juicer, my arsenal of spices, and countless other kitchen necessities, and a small carry-on sized suitcase filled with my personal belongings into my little Manhattan apartment. I guess this would not be called traveling light, but I just got home from an intense five day experience cooking for the Hazon nourishment cleanse retreat.

Shabbat Shalom to Marco, Phyllis, Talia, Mia, and Laila

Love, Everyone at Hazon

(Nigel, Cheryl, Daniella, Leah, Ariela, Nancy, Sabrina, David, Ben, Josh, Linda, and Hale)

I’m reporting from the Hazon staff “cleanse” on a comfortable couch on Fire Island.  A ten minute walk in one direction leads to the Atlantic Ocean.  A ten minute walk in the other direction leads to the Long Island Sound.  The garden outside boasts beans, tomatoes, kale, and strawberries so red they almost look cartoonish.

Yesterday, our “advance crew” (5 hearty Hazon staff members) met on the Upper West Side with 20 boxes of mostly organic vegetables and sundry supplies from Fresh Direct, the farmers’ market, and Trader Joes.  We loaded the food onto the freight ferry and followed along on a passenger ferry where we picked it up and – if you can believe it – hauled it by wagon (no cars allowed on the Island) to Phyllis and Marco’s wonderful home.  The next several hours were consumed by organizing the explosion of vegetables (a veritable living room shuk) and kashering the kitchen for the weekend.  After all the questions and researching and debating from the last few weeks about kashering, I thought the actual process would be a nightmare.  But aside from the toxic Easy-Off sprayed into the oven to remove any essence of food from the metal walls, it was fairly straight forward.  Keep your eyes peeled for pictures next week of our adventures in boiling siverware and dipping the blade of our juicer in the Long Island Sound, which ritually kashers it.  For those of you into food porn, we’ll also post an amazingly sexy shot of our fridge, filled to overflowing with miso and green, leafy vegetables.