Thanks to Chana Rubin, RD for this guest post. Chana is a registered dietitian who lives in Israel with her family. She’s the author of the new book Food for the Soul: Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating (Gefen Publishing House Ltd, Jerusalem, 2007). Chana will be guest posting throughout the week - and keep your eyes open for a chance to win a copy of her book!

I have lived in many different Jewish communities in the U.S. and in Israel and have seen the same patterns in most of them. Obesity and the sedentary lifestyle of our communities mimic that of the community at large, with added issues of kashrut, culture, Shabbat and holidays.

Preventative nutrition and nutrition education have always been my interest. It seems to me that it is easier and more cost effective to prevent illness before it happens rather than treat it after the fact. And there are many diseases – Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, to name a few, that are certainly preventable.

Many books address general nutrition, but none of them address the Jewish community in particular. Food for the Soul – Traditional Jewish Wisdom for Healthy Eating does just that. The nutrition information is universal, but tailored to our specific needs and our own food culture.

More and a recipe for Surprise Cupcakes after the jump

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If America is the proverbial “melting pot,” then Israel is a close second - at least when it comes to Jewish food and Mediterranean cuisines. In her book The Foods of Israel Today (Knopf), culinary goddess, Joan Nathan, explores the multiple culinary landscapes - European, Russian, Moroccan, Syrian, Italian and American to name a few - that converge and overlap across Israel’s homes, restaurants, and cafes.

Today, in celebration of Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), we’re raffling off a copy of The Foods of Israel Today so you can bring all the tastes of Israel into your home. To enter the raffle, tell us your favorite Israeli food experience - either an inspiring or interesting meal you ate in Israel, or delicious Israeli food you ate somewhere else… (deadline to enter: Sunday, May 11).

More and a recipe below the jump.

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Thanks to Alyssa Finn for this guest post. Alyssa is getting her Masters degree in Clinical Nutrition at NYU and is a Hazon volunteer on the New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride Exec.

Yesterday, I came home after a long bike ride in the New York sunshine. On my plate for the evening was a pile of reading in preparation for my chemistry exam the next day. I stared at the pile of books and papers. I looked longingly at my kitchen, the primary source of my procrastination.

Then I remembered: horseradish!

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Can anyone hear fava beans and not think of Anthony Hopkins?

“I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti.” (The movie is Silence of the Lambs, in case you missed it, and the infamous line was said by Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.)

But references to cannibalism aside, our Tuv Ha’Aretz has started here in Berkeley, and we’ve got more fava beans than we know what to do with. Which, when you get down to it, really isn’t that many at all. Read more »

Several months ago, The Jew & The Carrot featured the recipe for my mom’s amazing chocolate cake - the one that my brother and I begged for every birthday - mostly for the thrill of eating sweet, homemade frosting directly off the beaters.

Then yesterday, a reader sent me the following email:

“Long ago you posted a recipe for your mom’s chocolate cake. Finally I got around to making it for Shabbat dinner this past week. Since I’m really into my new camera and having lots of fun taking food pics, I thought I’d share the image. I used real roses and borage [to decorate it] too. Everyone loved the cake-the recipe is a keeper.” - Emily

With Mother’s Day coming up on Sunday, I figured now is the perfect time to share this delicious cake once again.  Happy Mother’s Day Mom! Recipes and another photo below the jump.

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Last January, Hazon began an organizational soul-search to explore how we could model our values by sourcing and serving healthy and sustainable food at our meetings and events. Our ultimate goals are lofty - we want to serve food that is:

• sustainable to the highest extent possible (local, organic, fair trade, etc.)
• healthy (nourishing, whole foods)
• kosher (accessible to all participants across the kosher spectrum)
• delicious!

In other words, we want to nix the obligatory bagel, cream cheese and unseasonal fruit platter (like the one we served at January’s board meeting) in favor of something that looked more like the menu we served at our April board meeting…

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x-posted at Lilith

Amy Ephron at The Huffington Post has a theory: “In order to be First Lady you have to have a cookie recipe.” Ephron’s tone is (of course) tongue-in-cheek as she describes Martha Washington’s “jumbles,” (a pretzel/biscuit hybrid) Jackie Kennedy’s peanut brittle, and Nancy Reagan’s coconut macaroons. Still, she brings up several serious questions.

If Hillary Clinton gets elected President, what sort of “cookies” would Bill be required to make? In other words, how would a woman’s presidency change the traditional roles of first spouse? And, more importantly, how would it change the presidency itself?

What sort of expectations of traditional “feminine/motherly” conduct would be foisted on Clinton in the White House? How would she balance her necessary role as Commander-in-Chief with these expectations (or would she)? Would she be pressured - like former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was - to serve a literal “steaming pot of tea and [homemade] cookies” to diplomats?

The answers to these questions remain to be seen - but if Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania has anything to do with it, Bill had better start perfecting his baking technique.

Golda Meir’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here
Hillary Clinton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here.

Is it just me, or is kosher cooking having itself a little bit of a renaissance? Over the last year, a slew of cookbooks have been published (like this one, this one, and this one!) that bring kosher cooking out of the Crisco era and into modern times. Ronnie Fein’s new book Hip Kosher is no exception. The book’s manifesto? Kosher cooking should be innovative, delicious, and accessible to all home chefs. And Fein is willing to prove it with creative, easy-to-prepare recipes like pea soup with mint and bulghur salad with feta and dill sauce.

Fein, who is the founder of the Ronnie Fein School of Creative Cooking in Stamford, CT spoke to The Jew & The Carrot about what hip kosher really means, Jewish food’s chameleon tendencies, and the many virtues of an ear of corn.

Read her interview below and, while you’re at it, WIN a copy of Hip Kosher! Answer the following question and be entered in a drawing to win: If you were a vegetable, what you’d be and why? (I promise this will make more sense when you read the interview.)

And congrats to Judi for being the randomly-selected winner in our last raffle for Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking.

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This past weekend, our synagogue hosted a “Pesach University”: A community-wide day of Passover workshops, on everything from the anthropological roots of the seder, to how to “green” your Pesach.

But the true highlight of the event was a live Passover cooking demonstration by none other than Ellie Krieger - an adjunct professor in the New York University Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, and star of the Food Network’s hit show, Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger. (She also happens to be the sister of one of our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA’s core group members, and a genuinely warm and funny person to boot.)

In honor of the occasion, Ellie chose to focus on two themes of the seder: dipping, and the tension between bitter and sweet in the story, and the food that accompanies it. Ellie made two delicious recipes, adapted from her new cookbook The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life, which she has graciously allowed me to share, after the jump: Read more »

There has been a lot of talk about charoset on The Jew & The Carrot lately. Reader Maddie commented: “I’ve always anticipated the crunch of the matzah mixed with the tangy zip of the apples, cinnamon, and raisins….mmm, can’t wait!” Contributor Alix Wall’s family sculpts their charoset into a pyramid shape, reminiscent of the pyramids in ancient Egypt. What the blog has lacked however, is a good solid recipe for the stuff. I’m here to change all that.

In my kitchen, I’ve moved beyond the traditional Ashkenazi-style charoset many Jews grew up eating. Although the traditional recipe is quite good, there are too many opportunities to mix things up - Sephardic recipes that replace raisins with sticky dates and figs, or even unexpected variations and flavors. But really, why choose? I like to make several different types of charoset and do a charoset tasting with my guests. After all, the seder is supposed to be fun!

Try these three charoset recipes at your seder - you might just start a new tradition!

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Arthur Schwartz likes to say: “If a kosher Martian landed in New York City today and observed what Jews were actually eating, he would think pizza and sushi were the most Jewish foods on earth.” I like to think that a copy of Schwartz’s new cookbook, Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited, would screw that misguided Martian’s head on straight.

Also called The Food Maven, Schwartz is known for being the man the New York Times Magazine dubbed “a walking Google of food knowledge.” His expertise extends far beyond Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine - still, Jewish Home Cooking is a true homecoming for this Brooklyn native.

Far beyond a collection of Yiddish recipes - Jewish Home Cooking offers a vivid snapshot of a particular era of Jewish life - the slender seltzer bottles delivered to your doorstep, butchers who knew your name and order, frothy egg creams with Fox’s U-Bet syrup, and slow-simmered tzimmes - that has all but vanished from today’s New York. With recipes that honor tradition (but aren’t stifled by it), and historical photographs and anecdotes of New York’s long-gone Jewish culinary hot spots, Schwartz breathes new life into Jewish cuisine with humor and love - but without the sloppy side dish of kitsch that usually (and annoyingly) comes along with Yiddish retrospectives.

Win a FREE copy of Jewish Home Cooking! Tell us your favorite Passover dish or food tradition and be entered into a drawing to win. Only one comment per person will be entered into the drawing - comment before Thursday, April 17.

Below the jump, Schwartz’s Passover Apple Cake.

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Passover falls the third week of April. While summer’s harvest is still months away, the first shoots and sprouts are beginning to poke their heads out of the soil. Your seder is the perfect place to celebrate this new emerging life - both on the seder plate, and during your meal.

Still planning what to serve? The Jew & The Carrot’s Passover menu will add healthy and sustainable flair - and the best tastes of springtime - to your seder table.  (This meal happens to be vegetarian, but aside from the lasagna, everything can easily be made parve - so feel free to substitute your favorite chicken, fish or brisket - recipe!)

On the Menu:
Vegetarian Matzah Ball Soup - or -
Borscht with Cabbage
Israeli Salad
Sauteed Fiddleheads with Garlic
Roasted New Potatoes with Rosemary
Almond Quinoa Salad - or -
Quinoa with Beets and Fresh Orange
Matzah Lasagna
Chocolate Dipped Macaroons

Find the recipes here.

This month is New Voices magazine’s Radio Issue. (Check below for free subscription info.) In the “Best Jewish Podcasts” article is an amazing little bubbe who’s grandson podcasts her cooking to the world…just adorable…

Bubbe, of Feed Me Bubbe

In a shining example of nerddom gone right, sweet grandson Avram hosts a brilliant and wholesome series on his bubbe’s cooking. An irregularly published video podcast, the show features the charming and hilarious Bubbe making classic Ashkenazi comfort food: kasha varnishkes, borsht, tzimmes, kugel, and the rest. The recipes are simple to follow. There is also a Yiddish word of the day, spoken in Bubbe’s Boston accent.

“If I can be everybody’s bubbe, that’s wonderful,” says Bubbe.

Whether you grew up eating handmade matzoh balls at your own bubbe’s table or you’ve only heard tales from your Ashkenazi friends, Feed Me Bubbe is a funny, charming, and surprisingly well-made video podcast that might just inspire you to cook your own shabbes meal. Or to at least call your grandma.

Subscribe to Feed Me Bubbe at www.FeedMeBubbe.com or on iTunes.

New Voices magazine is the only independent Jewish student magazine written by and for Jewish college students. Subscribe yourself or your college-aged kinderlach for free by emailing here with as many full names and addresses as you want. And like I said, it’s free.

First, a word from our sponsor: We interrupt Alix Wall’s posts about Vietnam (at least one more is still coming) to write about a more immediate concern: What is Alix going to cook for Passover?

My husband and I are hosting our family for Pesach. Maybe that isn’t a big deal for some of you, but for me, it is. I only had the seder at my house one other time, and I was so busy that I pretty much let all my family members do all the cooking. Not this year.

I am taking it very seriously this year; maybe because this is the first year that we are hosting, instead of just me. And maybe because I’m thinking of my mom now, and how flawlessly she could pull off a seder. Passover can be a difficult time of year for me; she died only a month after it. She was already very ill at her last seder, in 2002, but she managed to do a great deal of the cooking anyhow.

My uncle has let it be known that his expectations are high, now that I’m a professional chef. I don’t care about that so much. What’s dominating my thoughts these days is the memory of the pecan matzoh balls. Read more »