(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.

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One of the biggest criticisms of the organic, locavore, sustainable food etc. lifestyle is that it costs too damn much to be realistic. In other words, I may know that an organic red pepper is better for me and the world, but at $8/lb (versus $2/lb for the conventional pepper), I can’t always justify spending the extra money.

The problem is, the epicure in me gets a little twitchy if I don’t have a fairly regular influx of artisanal cheese or fresh, organic greens in the house. And these days my weekly feeding schedule includes Shabbat dinner and lunch, which, by way of being festive meals, deserve better-than-average food. So how do I satisfy my need for good food without breaking the bank?

Family lore tells me that my grandma Martha was able to stretch one chicken into a nourishing meal for six people, with leftovers. I unfortunately did not inherit this gift, but I have picked up some tricks for eating well on a budget without resorting to dumpster diving (don’t worry Mom, I’m over that phase), or existing on the starving artist fare of rice and beans, or - gasp - bologna and Wonder Bread.

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Last week, an alliance of consumer groups and environmental organizations in the UK called on Heinz to drop its bogus million-dollar advertising campaign that its soups contain: “ingredients that you would find at a Farmers’ Market.”  It reminded me of a similar commercial I recently saw that advertised Campbell’s soup as made from “farm-grown” vegetables - something that sounded so delicious and wholesome that even my finely-tuned (read: cynical) advertising ear almost missed the deceit. 

When it comes to attracting customers, some food companies will bend over backwards to connect their products to the current zeitgeist, even if the link is tenuous at best. Sustainweb reported:

“The mainstream food industry is keenly aware that descriptions such as ‘local’, ‘seasonal’ and ‘farmers’ market’ are attractive to consumers…disturbingly, our survey showed that such efforts are being hijacked. Big food companies and supermarkets have begun to abuse these valuable descriptions by applying them to products and practices that we believe do not deserve such ethical or environmental credentials.” 

This news is not surprising: in-the-know food consumers already understand that a happy cow on a bottle of milk does not necessarily mean the milk is ethically-sourced.  The remaining question is, when it comes to lying to customers - how far is too far?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue… 

Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right - you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.

Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.

Like any effective leader - Martin Luther King included - he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think - or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?

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We’re all familiar with the saying, “you are what you eat.” But two recent articles got me thinking that perhaps this old adage would be better stated, “you are what you think you eat.”

The first is a unnecessarily hateful article called “Extreme Eating” by Joel Stein in this week’s Time magazine. Stein decides to stick it to the “luddite” locavores, by making a meal strictly with ingredients grown 3,000 miles from his Los Angeles home and purchased at Whole Foods. (He must mistakenly believe that locavores revere Whole Foods as some sort of local food Mecca.) Stein writes:

“I want the world to come to me, to see it shrink so small it fits on my plate. I want Maine lobster in broth flavored with Spanish saffron. I want Alaskan salmon, truffles from Europe, a bottle of Beaujolais, a damn pineapple. And I want them much more than I want that carrot you grew in your garden. Because I know you’re going to talk to me for 20 minutes about your carrot.”

I’m not about to fight to the death for locavores or stop supplementing my CSA share with the occasional avocado or grapefruit. And as I’ve said before, there’s bound to be some backlash against sustainable food this year. But Stein’s “distavore” meal is little more than a petulant and obvious attack on a movement that has caused a lot of people to consider more carefully the impact of their food choices.

In his article, Stein likens his meal to one fit for a “European king.” Well, he’s right. European kings were known for cutting off people’s heads to get what they wanted, and in a sense, that’s exactly what his meal (ahem, publicity stunt) accomplished. Read more »

Local or organic? Farmer’s Market or Supermarket? And what about the GMOs? There’s a lot of talk — and a lot of confusion — these days, about our food. Around the world, people are starting to grapple with the negative impact that large scale, industrial Agribusiness has had over the past half century. As its legacy of soil erosion, polluted groundwater, and chemically-laden fruits and vegetables becomes clear, more and more people are choosing to support organic and local farmers. Emily Freed is one of those farmers. As the Assistant Field Production Manager of Jacobs Farm in Northern California, she’s responsible for over 250-acres of organic farmland. She’s also a Jewish activist who was recently named as one of the Heeb 100 in the category of Food. Despite it being her busy season (she was in the midst of moving about 6,000 lbs of herbs out of the farms each day when we caught up with her), she found the time to discuss the organic movement, the future of food, the connection between agriculture and the environment, and how it’s all related to Judaism.

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This past Shabbat, my boyfriend and I walked from Park Slope to Red Hook, Brooklyn (an hour each way - no, not uphill) to the Red Hook Harvest Festival.  He’d heard me yammer on for a while about the ”real life FARM” in the middle of Brooklyn, but as we passed the many corner stores and high rises that typify the borough, I think he started to doubt that such a place could really exist.  Until we arrived.

In the middle of a once dilapidated asphalt playground, 2.75 acres of earth and plants now thrive.  Brooklyn has a rich farming history - as late as the 19th century, Brooklyn was the second most productive agricultural county in the United States, second only to Queens.  But today, growing anything more than what fits in a window box or on a stoop seems nothing short of a miracle.    

The Red Hook farm was started by Ian Marvey, founder of an organization called Added Value, which empowers neighborhood kids and teens to learn farming and business skills (through farmer’s markets and sales to local restaurants), while strengthening the local community.  According to Added-Value’s website:  

“Twice in the past three years Red Hook’s only full-service grocery store closed, forcing residents to walk three miles and cross an eight lane road or take a $10 cab if they want to shop there. Red Hook was a textbook example of a broken food system and its effects on a community.  Now, we are becoming a model of how residents, businesses, social service agencies and religious institutions can begin to rebuild a food system that promotes social interaction and economic activity while nurturing our health and improving the environment.” 

Folks in the neighborhood know the farm.  Lost in an unfamiliar part of town, I asked a passing teenager if he knew where the corner of Columbia and Sigourney street was (unlike most rural farms, this one has an intersection).  He didn’t know.

“Um, do you know where the, uh, farm is?” I asked sheepishly.

“Oh yeah - the farm’s that way” he said, pointing us on. 

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Last month, I had a great time at the Alternative Energy Festival run by the Beacon Sloop Club, an affiliate of the Clearwater organization. The club has done wonders in rehabilitating the waterfront area, and bringing environmental education and progressive culture to the city.

Pete Seeger himself has been a hard-working member of the club from the beginning, and his commitment to the Hudson river has been remarkable and unwavering over many years, and it is always a delight to see him there. I came to sing, and to demonstrate the ‘Veggie Voyager’, my vegetable oil-powered van.

After my concert, I wandered around the well organized, dockside Beacon Farmer’s Market (with lots of sustainably grown food) that runs there every Sunday.

There I met Seth Aaron, a student from the Newburgh Free Academy, and part of the winning team in the 12th annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge, a national competition. They drove from Texas to NY in July, and tied for first place with a team from Missouri. That qualifies them to go on to the world championship in Australia. The car itself, dubbed the ‘Sol Machine’, is actually made of Kevlar, a welded titanium frame and solar panels that charge the battery. It can go up to 50 mph. The car’s parts total more than $50,000.

In my next post, I’ll be talking with Seth about his culinary experience on the trip.

Growing up, I loved preparing for Sukkot.  I looked forward to decorating my synagogue’s sukkah - stringing up bumpy gourds and looping paper chains through the open ceiling beams.  Even now, I associate the smell of fresh pine with the boughs we wove into the sukkah walls, and crave the sweet apple cider we drank while swatting away yellow jackets. 

These days, synagogues and Hillels across the country are jumping onto a new Sukkot craze - Pizza in the Hut.  Playing off the name of one of America’s most ubiquitous restaurant chains, this program ties together the mandate to dwell in a sukkah, with pizza’s undeniable power to bring people together.  (Google ”Pizza in the Hut” to get a sense of how widespread this phenomenon has become.)

The program certainly has it’s heart in the right place - but in practice, it’s incredibly backwards. 

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I am sitting in the Nagycsarnok — the Great Market — in Budapest, thinking: I’m only here for 4 days, there’s no way I can possibly eat my way through this country! Only four days, and one of them Yom Kippur.

This food is the Hungarian countryside, only edible. Cucumbers. Celery. Leeks. Melons. Yellow beans. Carrots and parsnips and piles and piles of peppers — pale green ones and bright red ones that look like crumpled wads of newspaper. While the amount of global food in Budapest is a little sobering (Burger King, pizza places, gyros and felafel and Chinese fast food), there are still a lot of foods I’ve never seen before, and that makes me feel I’m in a new place.

Such as bags of cheese — turned out to be a sort of dry cottage cheese. And a biscuit-type thing with cheese and pumpkin seeds. And (baruch hashem!) all the “meggy” treats — sour cherry turnover, strudel with sour cherries and poppyseeds….

What does it mean, to eat my way through a country? And what does that mean for Yom Kippur, a day of not eating?

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In preparation for Rosh Hashanah I have been thinking about what I always seem to be thinking about …. namely food. This year I will be preparing meals for a yet to be determined number of family and friends (quite a feat in my tiny only semi-functional kitchen with a mini stove that has not worked properly in 2 years and burners that seem to go on strike every few weeks). As this New Year approaches, I’ve been mulling over the significance and symbolism of food in our tradition. For much of our collective history, Jews were an agricultural people, maintaining the delicate balance of give and take with the earth. They nurtured the land that sustained them and directly reaped the benefits of their labor. Even if you yourself were not a farmer, you likely knew your neighbor who was. Nothing was taken for granted, the rainfall, the fertility of the soil, the well preserved seeds passed down from generation to generation, the livestock, the fruit trees, and the grain - it was all very real to the Jews who came together to celebrate their feast days. Simply put, food was holy.

Needless to say, today our relationship with food is very different. We are much farther removed from our food sources. Even when we try to support local agriculture, we are not dependent upon it. We are part of a thriving global economy that makes almost anything available to us at anytime (at a price of course). So if there is a hailstorm in northern New York, or Pennsylvania, or New Jersey, and crops are decimated - most New Yorkers would not even notice. We have been conditioned to associate food with hermetically sealed plastic packaging instead of the soil, plants, and aimals that are the true sources of our sustenance (which is why I believe that so many people who do eat meat are sqeemish about witnessing an animal being slaughtered ala hazon’s schitah debate - or even making the mental association that their “cutlet” in all of its skinless boneless glory was once a living breathing bird)

What I have decided to do this Rosh Hashanah is to focus on the local and seasonal bounty and blend in the traditional foods symbolic of the goodness, sweetness, and fruitfulness we hope to be blessed with in the year to come. Read more »

Well-seasoned foodies might find Sunday’s, NY Times article, In Pursuit of Farm Fresh Flavor, somewhat (excuse the pun) ”behind the times.”  The article’s basic theses were that local is the new organic, people like feeling connected to their food and farmer, and that those same people are hesitant to pay more for organic/local food.

Yep.  I’ve read that all before.  (I’ve even written that all before, as have many other food bloggers and writers.)

The article did, however, indirectly point out one interesting trend, which was summed up by Southampton resident, Sandra Fox’s comment: “If you live [in the Northeast] you know that the supermarket is for winter.” 

It seems that local food enthusiasts get more complacent about where their food comes from once the weather gets cold.  As the farmers markets close up shop and the CSA season ends, the overwhelming urge is to grit one’s teeth and return to the supermarket’s fluorescent haze and the waxy produce from far away lands. 

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I’m in a bit of an end-of-summer slump, and I don’t think I’m alone here.  It’s that time after all my big summer plans have fallen into the past tense, and just before the spicy pumpkin pie/back-to-school excitement kicks in.  The whole world seems slightly slowed down, like it’s spending all of its energy clinging to those last warm drops of summer sun.  My refridgerator only adds to the problem. 

Don’t get me wrong - summer isn’t over yet.  The farmers’ markets are still bursting with indecently red tomatoes, cucumbers, and the last of summer’s sweet corn.  But slowly, as the shadows of early fall begin to creep in, the harvest - and my mood - is changing.  Soon, the flamboyant crops of summer will give way to autumn’s humble root vegetables.  Soon, I’ll want to curl up into blankets and eat bowls filled with noodles and hibernate for a while.

As an antidote to my approaching fall melancholy, I’ve posted a recipe for “End of Summer Beets,” which I think captures the warmth and wealth of summer while embracing what’s to come.  I’d love to hear your ideas for cooking beets (as they currently take up half the space in my vegetable drawer) as well as how you transition gracefully into fall.

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I’m like a kid in a candy store these days at the farmer’s market. Living on the northeast gives us only a few blessed months of amazing local variety. Making jam is a great way to literally preserve these fresh summer flavors for at least a few weeks. I posted an easy recipe over on Jewcy’s The Daily Shvitz, where I write regularly about food. If you so desire, you can use pectin to preseve it longer than a few weeks in the fridge, or do some research on other canning methods. Whatever your method, don’t be afraid of the sugar — jam is sweet like the summer.