Trans fats,�an invention of the 20th century, permitted the development of such synthetic�food-like products as margarine and coffee whiteners.� Neither of these products�existed around the time my great-grandparents caught their first sight of the Statue of Liberty.� Nevertheless, as a result of focused, sustained, and wildly successful marketing campaigns to gain their recognition and acceptance,�they became an integral part of what is now considered �traditional� kosher cooking.� In 1912, for example, after Procter and Gamble of Cincinnati launched a nationwide campaign for Crisco, its new vegetable shortening,�it enlisted the support of American orthodox rabbis, notably Rabbi Moshe Zevulun Margolies (the �Ramaz�) of New York, to endorse Crisco as ritually pure.� P&G advertised that �the Hebrew Race had been waiting for 4,000 years� for a solution to its shortening problems.� Mazola worked with the Hebrew Ladies� Aid Society in Fargo, ND, to teach interested parties how to use their product, and made contributions to the local women�s burial society for every unit sold.� Other examples abound.

I went to my local supermarket to check out the ingredients in�pareve margarine and coffee whitener.� Mother�s lists �liquid and partially hydrogenated soybean oil� first. �Fleischmann�s lists partially hydrogenated soybean oil second, after liquid corn oil.��The first three ingredients in original Coffee-Rich are, in order,�water, corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.� The first three ingredients in fat-free Coffee-Rich are, curiously, identical.� �Partially hydrogenated� means trans fats.

What’s wrong with trans fats?� The problems are numerous, diverse, and well established.� Trans fats cause heart disease.� They increase insulin resistance, which causes diabetes.� Trans fats decrease good cholesterol and increase bad cholesterol. �They suppress the immune response, interfere with reproduction, and decrease the nutritional quality of milk.� They alter the properties of cell membranes.� They enhance deposition of abdominal fat.� In a famous study of 85,000 women conducted by Harvard University,�individuals with heart disease were found to have eaten significantly higher amounts of trans fats.

Trans fats have been banned in other countries, and in several cities throughout the U.S., but they have yet to be banned across our nation.� What the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated is that food containing less than � gram of trans fat per serving may be advertised as�”trans-fat free.”� That�s not good enough.� In the case of Coffee-Rich, a serving is 1 tablespoon.� This morning I felt like making my�coffee extra light, so I put 4 tablespoons, or � cup, of milk into�the mug.� If I had used Coffee-Rich, that would have added up to almost 2 grams of trans fat.� Just for the first cup.� So it would be easy, on any given day, to consume quite a bit of trans fat solely from trans-fat-free food.� That�s a problem.

What are our alternatives?� First and foremost, skip the coffee whitener.� Drink your coffee black, or choose tea with honey or lemon.� Try coconut, almond, soy, or rice milk if you�d like.� Bake pareve as our foremothers did for a thousand years, with coconut oil, which stays solid below 75 degrees Fahrenheit.� Decline to make�recipes that call for pareve margarine.� Don’t use it in place of butter; make different recipes.� We vote every time a bar code passes over a scanner, so don�t buy margarine or coffee whitener for your home, office, or synagogue.� There is no place for synthetic trans fats in a healthy community.

Good news for all you justice-seeking java-lovers and chocoholics! AJWS has teamed up with Equal Exchange and formed Better Beans – � a new initiative to sell and distribute fairly traded, kosher coffee and chocolate. Better Beans products allow congregations, community organizations and individuals to order high-quality coffee and chocolate while supporting farmers and community cooperatives in the developing world.

Many of us know that for the majority of small-scale farmers and producers in the developing world, the benefits of their hard work and economic investments are small. Isolated from global markets, the long journey of crops from their hands to your table is filled with powerful intermediaries. As a result, little of the money that you spend on food reaches them. That’s why Better Beans chocolate and coffee are produced by community-owned cooperatives that enable the farmers who produce them to receive fair prices for their crops and access to affordable credit and equitable long-term trade relationships.

By choosing to buy fair trade, we’re helping to build a global system that treats all producers equitably and embodies the Torah’s vision of a just society. So, spread the word and place your Better Beans order today!

Tiny Vial of Pharisäer

What do you put in your coffee?

Pharisees of course

Ever-sensitive to appearances of Jewish references in popular culture, I was a bit surprised to read Maureen Dowd’s headline in the New York Times on Sunday, July 19, 2009: “Pharisees on the Potomac”

I did not see any mention of late antiquity in her column and it was not until a number of hours later that I realized she had used the Christian allusion to Pharisees as hypocrites! Shame on her and shame on her editors (I wonder if William Safire saw the column). As the Wikipedia makes quite clear:

Because of the New Testament’s frequent depictions of Pharisees as self-righteous rule-followers, the word “pharisee” (and its derivatives: “pharisaical”, etc.) has changed in meaning and has come into semi-common usage in English to describe a hypocritical and arrogant person who places the letter of the law above its spirit. Jews today (who subscribe to Pharisaic Judaism) typically find this insulting if not anti-Semitic.

But what does this have to do with coffee?

When Debbie and I traveled in Europe in the spring of 2006, our route took us from Mainz to Hameln.  We climbed out of the Rhine valley and spent the night at a lovely campsite outside of Alsfeld.

Camping near Alsfeld

The following day, we had the entire day to accomplish a two and a half-hour drive. So when we found ourselves in downtown Alsfeld we took advantage of the situation. We had a couple of errands to accomplish and needed to purchase some food for lunch so we stopped and explored the market square, the old wood-beamed buildings and a couple of the small shops along the main market street.

In one of the tiny shops we found a small bottle of Heimbs Kaffee labeled PHARISÄER. It turned out to be a bit of coffee-flavored rum (or perhaps rum-flavored coffee).

Needless to say, I bought a couple of bottles as souvenirs. I have added a drop or three to my own coffee periodically. I could not find any other references to it at the time, but Maureen had me thinking more about the Pharisees, so I began a search. The story is told by Christina Geyer, an American expatriate in Germany on her blog which I reproduce here:

The weather-beaten coastal residents of the North Sea have always had a passion for freshly-brewed, strong coffee — as opposed to their tea-drinking cousins from the beaches of the Baltic Sea. Especially appreciated was the black brew with a rich ingredient that was a hallmark of Flensburg: Rum! Nothing weighed on the brave people more though, than to bother their watchful preacher with this small vice. And so they camouflaged the feel-good cup — in the form of an airy dollop of cream. Naturally, it didn’t take long for the man of God to discover their tactic and in his outrage he cried: Oh, you pharisees!

I’m fascinated by the etymology of the name for this drink and would like to learn more about it. I’ve yet to find a more authoritative source.

No more “Pharisees”

My bottle is nearly empty. I have not found any source for importing more Heimbs Kaffee PHARISÄER to New York to stock on my shelf. However, even if I can replenish my supply, I hope that Maureen Dowd removes the word from her shelf of available pejoratives.

Welcome to Part II of the “Worm Diaries: Chronicles of an Apartment-dwelling Vermicomposter.”  In the last episode, I wondered whether putting bread in my worm bin rendered it as chametz for Passover.  (Click here for the answer.)

This time around, my question is about coffee – as in, is it possible to over-caffeinate my worms?  As work-from-home freelancers, my husband and I make a pot of coffee just about every morning.  That means, almost every afternoon, I dump a fresh pile of coffee grounds into our compost bin.  Like me, the worms seem to love the stuff – favoring it over crushed egg shells, the ends of a cereal box, and even minced up vegetable bits.  But while I haven’t noticed any serious behavioral changes (is it even possible to notice behavioral changes in worms?), I worry that our coffee habit might have negative impacts on “the babies.”  (God, please protect my future children from their future over-protective Jewish mother.  Amen.)

Any advice – anecdotal or otherwise – from more-seasoned composters would be greatly appreciated!

Photo from Wikimedia

The other night after breaking practice, I went with my fellow b-people [break dancers] to eat some dinner. We ended up at Nussbaum & Wu, a bakery that serves basic, American cuisine, or as a Korean-American bgirl called it as she headed to an Asian store- “white people food.” Perhaps the bakery also serves non-white people food, but I didn’t make it over to the Wu side of the business. On the Nussbaum end, I ordered a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese. (Chosen not because it was the Jewiest thing in the store but for reasons of thrift- I had already spent four dollars on my lunch and this meal pushed me just slightly over my five dollar food per diem. Actually, now that I think about it, cheapness is just as culturally Semitic as a bagel.)

Are you at the edge of your seat yet? I know that a carb loaded dinner after an exhausting workout is hardly noteworthy, blogworthy or even Twitter worthy. But it was actually very thrilling, at least for me. I don’t get out much.

As I ate my bagel, alternating between listening and jumping into the conversational fray and in general , I kept flashing back to similar scenes from Dvora: the College Years.

Back then, I had been a member of the club gymnastics team and after practice we often went for food. While my teammates proceeded to order and eat 1/10 of their body weight, I enjoyed a Diet Coke, the gymnast meal of champions. If it was especially late, I’d choose caffeine free DC, or as my cousin likes to call it, brown water.

The reason for my anorexic selection- kashrut. Aside from kosher dining, there was no place on campus to buy rabbinically supervised food. Though I tried to insert myself into the conversation in between sips of my liquid dinner, I always felt a little left out. At the time, I had no idea why.

Many of my friends (and certainly most of my family) believe that I’ve “rebelled” in the ways I have because I enjoy being controversial and heretical, and they’re right to a point. I do get a giggle out of pointing out the absurdity and hypocrisy of Orthodox Judaism. I enjoy using my extensive Jewish legal, biblical and Talmudic knowledge for laughs.

But I’m not like the Seinfeld dentist who converted to Judaism just for the jokes. I did not become less observant just to be snarkier and more outrageous. I did it for the bagel. I started down this road, one that has led me from eating in only kosher restaurants to only vegan restaurants, then only vegetarian restaurants, to mostly vegetarian establishments to vegetarian food in any spot, so that I could become part of different communities. I want to be able to break bread or even a bagel with anyone, anywhere and anytime.

(Of course, I could always suggest a kosher spot to eat. But sometimes you don’t want to go to 72nd Street or Midtown or Brooklyn to be served by rude Israelis in a restaurant whose decor, attitude and atmosphere all seem to be saying (in an exasperated tone)- “We’re kosher. Isn’t that enough for you?“)

In the field of calorie and fat reduction (the work I do for Rhode Island’s Public School System) we follow a four step system to make recipes healthier. Remember it is not necessary to eliminate all of the ingredients considered harmful. Small amounts of fat, sugar, salt, and cholesterol can actually be good for your system, so we are just looking to decrease the amounts of each, not remove them completely.

1. Identify the problem ingredients; look for nutritional issues like more than one egg per serving, or lots of oil and salt.

2. After you have listed the problem ingredients figure out what they do in the recipe. For example eggs may be used for leavening, or thickening. Don’t try making custard without the eggs, it may be healthier, but it won’t be custard. You can safely remove half of the egg yolks in almost any recipe; just replace every other yolk with one white. Look at the use of sugar, if it is for taste alone then it can be replaced or reduced, but if it is for moisture retention in baking, or for caramelization like in butterscotch there are very few things that will react like sugar so it may be best to leave it alone.

3. Modify the recipe, substitute other ingredients for the problem ones, or reduce them. Also, at this stage people will add spices and other flavor-enhancing foods to keep the food tasting good, even though fat and cholesterol have been reduced.

4. Evaluate the recipe, see how well it works. Does the finished product look, smell, sound, feel and taste good? If it does then you did it! Your family will have a delicious and healthy meals this Passover.

Here are two of my own Passover recipes that I have modified; these offer a good balance of pretty healthy and very tasty.

Austrian Mocha Peach Torte – yields 12 portions

7 egg whites

Three egg yolks

1 cup sugar

4 ounces margarine

1 ¼ semisweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon orange juice concentrate

2 teaspoons instant coffee

½ cup white chocolate chips

3 ripe peaches cut in thin wedges

1 fresh lemon

1. Preheat oven to 325. In a mixer bowl beat egg whites until soft peaks form then add ½ cup sugar slowly while whipping to stiff peaks.
2. Melt margarine and semisweet chocolate together whisk in coffee, orange juice and sugar.
3. Remove from heat and add egg yolks one at a time to bowl, and then fold in egg whites.
4. Pour into an ungreased 10” spring form pan. Melt white chocolate in double boiler and pour over batter, cutting in with spoon to “marble”
5. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove to cooling rack. The center will fall when cooing.
6. Use a paring knife around the edges to release from the spring form pan and unmold.
7. Arrange fresh peach wedges on top and brush with fresh lemon juice.
8. Melt the remaining semi sweet chocolate chips and drizzle over the peaches.

Refrigerate before serving.

Spinach Mushroom Tomato Matzo Bake – Yields 4 entrée size portions

Requires overnight in refrigerator

1 pound of frozen spinach (thawed)

1 cup ricotta cheese

¼ cup fresh dill

salt & pepper to taste

at least 4 matzos

1 pound fresh mushrooms

2 tablespoons extra virgin first cold press olive oil

2 large ripe tomatoes

1 large egg

½ cup milk (skim is fine)

½ cup shredded cheese (cheddar works well)

1. Spray a casserole dish with non stick cooking spray
2. Squeeze water from spinach and mix with ricotta, dill and salt & pepper
3. Cover bottom of dish with matzos, breaking them to fit if needed
4. Spread spinach mixture over matzos then add a second layer of matzos
5. Sautee mushrooms with olive oil and place them on top of matzos
6. add another layer of matzos
7. slice the tomatoes very thin and use all of them for the third layer
8. Cover tomatoes with remaining matzos
9. Whip together the egg and milk with at least 1/8th teaspoon salt and pepper until blended and pour over all the ingredients in the baking dish
10. Top with cheddar cheese and refrigerate overnight
11. Preheat oven to 350 and bake for one hour until golden brown and firm in the center.
12. Serve warm!

Yosh and I got a worm composter for our wedding – it’s true, we are just that dorky!  For the last week or so (yes, we got married in November, but the composter arrived in mid-February, and I finally got around to getting the worms last week), I’ve been the proud mom of a brood of about 1,000 wriggling, very hungry worms.

They live in the Worm Factory, pictured above (p.s. definitely not our kitchen), and  I couldn’t be more excited.  Yosh on the other hand, is a bit more squeamish about the whole thing, though I can’t blame him.  He suffered through a bit of worm trauma when his last roommate neglected to properly feed worms, and the bin quickly self destructed.

But aside from the nachas I feel over the little munchies - which was a definitely surprise – I was certainly not counting on our compost bin bringing up halachic (Jewish law) questions.  Then Passover entered the horizon.

Inspired by Arlyn’s recent post, “Can You Be Chametz-Free in 29 Days?” I started raiding the kitchen for old ends of challah,  bagel halves, and loaves of stale bread that I shoved in the freezer instead of throwing them away.  According to the Worm Factory guidebook, worms like to eat fruits and vegetables, starches of all kinds – pasta, doughnuts, rice, cereal, stale bread, etc. – and what they call “healthy snacks” – coffee grounds (a standout favorite among our worm crew), crushed egg shells, and tea bags.  What better way to slowly rid the house of chametz that we aren’t going to eat, then feed them to the compost bin?

But what happens if, when Passover begins next month, there is still some starchy debris hanging out in the pile that has not yet been converted to soil?  Do we own that chametz?  Are we benefiting from it because our worms are happy and healthy?  Do we need to, gulp, sell our bin to the neighbors?  Like any Jewish mother, I’m reluctant to let go and entrust them in someone else’s care.

I thought about consulting The Shmethicist on this one (and I’d definitely love to hear her thoughts), but I think we’re in need of a rabbinic opinion here – or three – on this one.  Help a worm-loving sister out!

Photo Credit: BWCN Farms

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.

1. Tomato Juice: This tangy drink will cure your craving for more alcohol. Try a virgin bloody mary, an alcoholic version, or make some pasta sauce with tomato juice!

2. Spinach Pie: Hungover folks crave grease and cheese and this yummy alternative isn’t too far off.  Check out the instructional video!

3. Giant Soup: Nothing could be more cleansing than a clear broth filled with noodles and veggies.  Try Japanese Udon or Vietnemese Pho.  These soups are actually my cure for everything, including stress, heartache and exhaustion.  Give it a try.

4. “Fry Up”: The British version of scrambled eggs including all sorts of mix-ins (meat, potatoes, beans, etc).  This is definitely what you’ll be craving so put a fun spin on it like adding smoked salmon.

5. Seltzer: My other personal cure for everything, those fizzy seltzer bubbles seem to effervese my hangover away.   Try mixing in some cranberry juice and a squeeze of lemon for a cocktail-esque beverage, or go for a classic anti-hangover combination of seltzer and alka-seltzer before bed.

The sleeve on my latest latte (only one this week! I’m doing well on my new year’s resolution!) is advertising Starbucks’ latest promotion: TeaTime at Starbucks! The tagline is “The only handheld device you’ll need is this.”

I like it.

It reminds me of shabbat. It’s tea time: The only thing you need to be doing right now is drinking your tea. It’s shabbat: Turn your phone off.

On that note, shabbat shalom!

P.S. Before you judge me for using the sleeves (which were created to reduce the materials being used because customers were taking a second cup to insulate their hands from the heat of their drinks), I usually have one in whatever bag is with me at the moment, and when I don’t have one with me, I collect them, to be returned later. This picture is all of the sleeves I have collected in the past year, seriously, from January 2008. I’m taking them all back to Starbucks next week!