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.

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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…

Check out Jewish Raw Food here.

Photo credit: Judy Pokras “Raw Vegan Potato Latkes and Mock Sour Cream”

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.
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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:

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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 :

… Now, I realize that when I say “food cleanse” you likely have no idea what I’m talking about and I know this because that was precisely my reaction when, two weeks ago, my boss told me that I would be organizing the entire event. A cleanse, you say? What could that mean? Bathing in fruit juices? Avocado face masks? I hadn’t a clue. But it turns out that a “food cleanse” - at least, one run by Halé Sofia Schatz - is all about eating healthfully and cleansing our bodies of the “toxins” we ingest every day. Sugar, caffeine, refined flour, chocolate, dairy - Halé believes that all these foods are not only difficult to digest but also put toxic substances into our systems…

… On June 14th the Cleanse experience officially began when I headed out to Fire Island with several heroic staff members. Our mission: to haul five days worth of organic produce to the beach house we’d be living in (no cars are allowed on Fire Island so this was done by hand-pulled wagon) and to kasher the kitchen. Phyllis Bieri, whose house we were using, wrote a fascinating post about the kashering process, as did my co-worker Leah Koenig, so I won’t go into that here, but suffice it to say that by evening we were knackered. Not only had we transported an incredible amount of food and thoroughly done over a kitchen, but we had done so while remaining faithful to our pre-Cleanse diets. This was a feat, especially when you consider how we passed Rachel’s Bakery on each trip to and from the boat dock. Behold the awesome power of peer pressure, by which I mean that, had I been making these trips alone, I would have been seriously tempted to duck into Rachel’s for a bite of contraband cookie. (Ok, I was tempted anyways, but I didn’t do it. Which is what matters. Ahem.)

Read the rest of this post by clicking here…

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.

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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.

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As Leah, one of my colleagues, posted last week, our staff is getting ready for our Food Cleanse which will be this weekend. Not only do we have to prepare the logistics of getting all of us and our food out to Fire Island, we have to adjust our eating habits and wean ourselves off of certain foods this week so as not to shock our systems when we start eating “Cleanse” meals. The main items that pose as a personal challenge include caffeine… carbs… and sugar. When our staff was informed of this information, some of us were afraid to react vocally and were a tad surprised. While it makes sense to engage in these changes, no one said the process will be easy!

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I was not raised kosher, in fact I wasn’t even raised Jewish. I grew up eating everything. I chose to become a Jew out of love, and I have never stopped loving this people that I chose. But sometimes they drive me crazy.

I love food, and I love to cook. I could not, cannot, and will not limit myself to those food groups permissible in Leviticus. As a friend of mine says, “Halacha is not my thing.”

My kitchen is clean and organized, like my mother’s. I have attachments to many implements and cooking utensils, e.g. my grandmother’s spatula, my father’s cherry cutting board, the patina on a vintage 8-inch cast iron frying pan. I could go on.

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Next week, Hazon’s staff is heading out to Fire Island with a van full of organic vegetables.  Those readers who are familiar with Hazon might not be too surprised by this statement.  But the circumstances of this particular trip are pretty extraordinary.  What are we doing?

We’re going cleansing. 

Over the last two years, Hazon’s ED, Nigel, has attended two “nourishment cleanses” - both held on the beautiful Mediterranean shores of Turkey and led by nourishment consultant and educator, Hale Sofia Schatz. 

Okay, I know that last sentence might have been a lot to swallow.  But I promise it will make more sense as you keep reading…

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