Archive for the 'Family & Kids' Category
Jews Bring Food: Tips for Feeding Grieving Friends
I’m an avid cook, but I think in the past three months I’ve probably made a total of four meals. Menu planning, grocery shopping, and cooking elaborate meals—all activities I love—have been out of the question since March, when my mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. We have spent so little time in the kitchen since the diagnosis that my mom, an enthusiastic and innovative chef in her own right, recently joked she had probably forgotten how to use a measuring cup.
Though I miss cooking and baking, spending time with my mom is my top priority these days, so I’m glad that our community has stepped in and set up an extensive network of people to bring us food so we don’t have to spend all day in the kitchen. We have gotten some truly amazing and delicious meals. Still, there have also been some pretty substantial bumps in the road.
Here are some tips to take into consideration if you’re called on to bring food to a family member or friend who’s ill, recovering from surgery, or dealing with a recent loss.
4 Comments »Back to Baking - Honey Challah
One of the strategies I use to make it through the eight long, flat, matzah-days of Passover is to fantasize about the challah I’m going to start baking as soon as the holiday is over.
I’ve made challah often enough in the past that even when I don’t bake for a while, I still have a strong sense-memory of what to do. But the week after Pesach—my first time back to baking challah in six months!—there was definitely an extra tingle in my fingertips when I plunged my hands into the warm, thick dough. I had to take a few extra breaths of the nutty-malty smell right at that moment when I add the sponge to the rest of the ingredients…It’s the smell of the anti-Pesach, the aroma of pure chametz, the yeast busy doing its magic, raising the roofs of a hundred (a thousand?) tiny bubbles in a bit of flour and water, sitting under the hot lights on my kitchen counter.
Review: Eat Like a Rainbow (Win a Copy)
Singer-songwriter (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Jay Mankita recently teamed up with The NY Coalition for Healthy School Food to create Eat Like a Rainbow - a “rocking, funky, danceable collection of quirky kids songs about healthy food and sustainable living.”
Sounds great, but would kids actually listen to a CD about eating fruits and vegetables? Last weekend, I tested it out on the experts, my three daughters.
Yid.Dish: Zucchini Pancakes
Cookbooks, Cooking, Eco-Kashrut, Family & Kids, Featured, Food Writing, Health, Israel, Kosher, Recipes
Thanks to our guest poster of the week, Chana Rubin, RD for this article and recipe. 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
We recently had a major heat wave here in Israel - the kind of day when you don’t even want to step into the kitchen, let alone turn on the stove. A fresh green salad was definitely in order for dinner, but what could we have with it that wouldn’t take hours in the kitchen?
From the refrigerator, a small container of leftover cooked beet greens gave me the answer: PANCAKES! Mention pancakes and most of us think of breakfast, but vegetable pancakes are especially popular in Sephardic cuisine – spinach and feta cheese pancakes and leek patties are good examples. Vegetable pancakes can be a good way to get children to eat vegetables, especially if you serve them as “finger food”.
My recipe started with about half a cup of chopped beet greens previously cooked with onion and garlic. I added an egg and about 1/3 cup of flour, salt, pepper and a dash of cinnamon. Try spinach, chard, broccoli or grated zucchini. Add an egg or two and a binder – whole wheat pastry flour works well. Fresh herbs are a wonderful addition.
Here’s a recipe to get you started - what it is your favorite savory pancake?
Grow This Summer with the Jewish Farm School
Community Agri., Compost, Eco-Kashrut, Events, Family & Kids, Farming, Health, Jewish Farm School, Organic, Participate!, Sustainability, gardening
Here are two amazing opportunities for farming and Jewish learning this summer - with The Jewish Farm School:
Hillel Organic Farm Alternative Breaks
The Jewish Farm School, in partnership with Hillel, will provide a total of 60 college students the opportunity to participate in a weeklong farm-immersion experience. During the two programs, students will be volunteering on sustainable farms located on the East and West coasts. No previous experience is necessary. June 11-18 (Kayam Farm, MD) and June 24-July 1 (Oz Farm, CA). Cost $200 - details here.
Program Highlights:
Learn basic skills in sustainable agriculture, food preservation, natural building and herbal remedies.
Discuss issues of food justice, sustainability and Jewish tradition.
Work alongside other college students and enjoy delicious homegrown food.
JFS Seminar on Organic Agriculture and Eductional Gardening
June 2-5
Surprise Lake Camp, Cold Spring, NY
Join us for our 3rd annual seminar in Organic Agriculture and Educational Gardening. Run in partnership with the Teva Learning Center, this program is designed for educators seeking to incorporate gardening or farming into their work. Register here.
Seminar Highlights:
Experience an early morning harvest at an organic farm and learn how small-scale, sustainable agriculture operates - first hand.
Learn the skills to build your own Jewish garden.
Study traditional Jewish texts and contemporary scholarship.
Discuss garden-based curriculum and activities.
The Jewish Farm School is supported by Hazon.
Happy Early Mother’s Day (Chocolate Cake)
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.
Rip Up Your Lawn? One Man Says “Yes I Can”
Family & Kids, NYTimes, Participate!, Personal Story, Seasonality, Sustainability, Vegetables, gardening
Last month, right before Passover, David Elcott ripped up his lawn. This White Plains-based author/lecturer was out to prove - to himself as much as others - that you do not need years of experience to grow your own food. All you need is a desire to eat great food and a piece of fertile ground - like your lawn (or nearby community garden for city dwellers). Partnering with the COEJL blog, To Till & To Tend, we’re excited to bring you David’s first hand accounts, frustrations, and victories from the “front lines” of his lawn farm.
Operation Lawn Farm: Part 1
I was going crazy today. Tech problems with my printer took hours. Nothing accomplished. A lousy conference call committee meeting. Exhausted. At five in the evening, I took the world into grip and, like Superman, ripped off my work clothes, put on my dirty sweats and headed out to the farm.
Michael Pollan on Counting the Omer (and the Freedom to Bother)
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine’s Green Issue, Michael Pollan asked the question that tugs at the anxious heartstrings of every environmentalist, “why bother?” “What’s the point of living green?” he asks - planting a garden, turning down the thermostat, and carrying a reusable mug if:
“I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit.”
Moreover, what good are these personal lifestyle choices if our businesses and governments continue to spew chemicals into rivers and give tax incentives to commodity crop farmers and SUV-makers? The answer, Pollan suggests (calling upon the infinite wisdom of farmer-activist, Wendell Berry) is: because together, we can change the world.
The Passover Shvitz
Four years ago I stood at my stove for more than three hours and turned my kitchen into a Russian shvitz as I boiled every metal utensil, every pot, and every serving piece in both my milchig and fleishig sets. Explaining the ins and outs of Passover cleaning to friends and families who don’t keep kosher—and even understanding it myself—is an ongoing challenge. But this time around, I didn’t question the cleaning: I simply felt elated.
No doubt all that steam, the sweat pouring out of me, was cleansing. But beyond that. I was different. My dishes were still my dishes, a tad cleaner than usual, but I had changed. I’d been turned upside down, dunked head first, and what used to be on top and super-important was repositioned, minimized, shifted to the bottom of consciousness or dissolved altogether. I had a level of clarity and focus on the holiday that I often don’t. Usually I’m crazy about all the things I have to do before Pesach and end up not doing half of them. I come into the holiday frazzled.
Strangely, that year I did more, cleaned more, but I was not filled up with anxiety and to-do lists. I must have had those lists; why would that year have been different from all other years? But I wasn’t consumed by the process. I did the kashering, and everything else fell into place: the thousand details, the logistics of the switchover, chametzdik kitchen to pesachdik kitchen, the menu-making, the buying of Pesach food and selling of chametz, the emptying out of cupboards immediately followed by the loading up.
Read it & Eat: Review of Cooking Jewish
Books, Cookbooks, Cooking, Family & Kids, Food Writing, Jewish Culture, Kosher, Meat, Photography, Recipes, Shabbos Meals, Women
I’ve only had my copy of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family
As the title might suggest, this book is a family affair. Author Judy Bart Kancigor beautifully describes how the book came into existence, stemming from a desire to pass on her family’s food traditions. As a result, almost every recipe has a story, which can be a bit overwhelming at times, but ultimately brings the recipes to life. It’s not just a cookbook; you feel invited in, as though you’re taking part in the Rabinowitz family tradition by making this food. And the pictures are great – a time-capsule of American Jewish life opened to reveal many embarrassing hairstyles and equally embarrassing bar mitzvah pictures.
More and recipes for banana bread and sesame crusted chicken below the jump.
Joseph and the Amazingly Expensive Commodity Crops
(x-posted at Lilith)
Today, I disagreed with Michael Pollan. (I know - I’m a little bit scared too.) According to an article in today’s NY Times, my favorite foodie believes that the rising price of commodity crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans is a good thing. The Times reports:
“[Pollan] likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.”
In other words, if the price of a Big Mac goes up high enough, then people will switch to purchasing vegetables at the farmers’ market. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be member of Pollan’s shul - I buy his argument that paying more for “good” food like free range eggs or organic milk is worthwhile, and that cheap foods are falsely cheap (though perhaps not for long).
But I think Pollan’s assertion that: A (foods made with commodity crops) + B (higher prices on those crops) = C (consumers purchasing more fruits and veggies from small farms) doesn’t necessarily hold up for the majority of the country’s eaters.
Aunt Toni’s Energy Bar
Thanks to Elena Sigman for this guest post.
My Tante Toni (may her memory be a sweet blessing) made a dish for Purim, called noun, which I haven’t seen since the 70s. It was my favorite treat at her house: a plate of sweet, sticky pieces of noun cut in the shape of diamonds about one-and-a-half inches long. I guessed it was made of honey and chopped nuts and dates, but I was never sure of the recipe. It was dark brown and chewy and even though it was super-sweet it was also somehow tangy. The plate was passed around the table at the end of our Purim seudah, and it was quickly finished. The batches were never big.
Tante Toni had blue eyes that were two different colors because one was hers and the other was glass. The glass eye was bluer and bigger and her real eye was smaller and more hazel. At home in the evening, she wore a hairnet in order to preserve her coiffure from erev Shabbos, after she came home from the beauty parlor, until the next Friday morning when she’d get her hair done again. She was a smart, compact woman, barely taller than my child self, but she walked with a spine so straight no runway model could match it. She never tried to make chit chat with me. When I was a kid I would occasionally sleep over at her apartment on Friday night. After dinner she read the B’nai Brith Messenger cover to cover in her high-backed chair, and I read my book (Agatha Christie mysteries one year, Pearl S. Buck novels the next) on the couch until the Shabbos clock clicked off the light.
Schools, Food & Community Conference - April 12-13 @ Teacher’s College, Columbia U
This will be a great conference with lots of workshops, networking opportunities, and entertainment! I’ll be showcasing songs from my new CD ‘Eat Like A Rainbow’ (more about that in my next post). Lots of luminaries will be there, including some of our own readers! The 2008 program will focus on strengthening the resolve of children to eat nutritious, fresh foods by:
* connecting holistic food and nutrition messaging in our classrooms, cafeterias, after-school programs, homes, and neighborhoods;
* fostering relationships among school children and their communities that focus on food, cooking, and gardening;
* exploring the nuts and bolts of cross sector (i.e. health, education, foodservice, and agriculture) public and private collaborations; and
* promoting federal, state and local policies that strengthen economic and cultural bonds between local farms and schools, support the development of school gardens, and provide adequate funding for healthy, delicious school lunches for all students.
Hebrew Speaking Foodies: Help!
To all the Hebrew-speaking foodies out there - here’s a challenge for you. Hazon is working with Jewish day schools in New York to create Min Ha’Aretz (”from the land”) - a family education program. In short, Min Ha’Aretz uses food and Jewish learning as focal points to create an innovative curriculum for day school students, a related beit-midrash (learning group) for their parents, and all-school activities (farm trips, cooking demos, nutrition classes etc.) where kids and parents have the opportunity to learn together. The program aims to strengthen intra-family conversations about eating, Jewish tradition, and the world around us.
Here’s where you come in. Our first partner schools have successfully launched Min Ha’Aretz - meanwhile, we’re always striving to improve the curriculum. Since most day schools encourage their students to be bi-lingual, we are in the process of translating the curriculum’s lesson titles into Hebrew. The thing is, we’re kinda stumped on a couple of them.
The question: how do you translate ”whole foods” (the concept, not the health food chain-store!) and “food miles” into Hebrew in a way that does justice to their nuanced meanings, while still making sense? Any brilliant suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Find out more about Hazon’s Min Ha’Aretz day school curriculum here.
