Last week, Adamah dropped off our first-ever Tuv Ha’Aretz share to Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. It felt somewhat historic (bashert? destined?) to finally bring together the young Jewish farmers at Adamah with Hazon’s Jewish Community-Supported Agriculture program. One of the highlights of the day was driving down to the city in Adamah’s new truck, which runs on used vegetable oil and is emblazoned with the icon above and the beautiful words, “Young Jewish Farmers: Changing the World One Pickle at a Time.”
We’re looking for sources of used vegetable oil to power the truck! If you have connections to restaurants who could donate used grease in Westchester, Duchess or Putnam Counties, please be in touch! Check out more photos of the truck, below.
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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.
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Thanks to Andrew Kastner for this powerful guest post on his decision to train to be a shochet, a Jewish ritual slaughterer. It’s easy to talk in the abstract about getting in touch with one’s food, but significantly more difficult to actually take the responsibility of doing so into our own hands….
Earlier this year, I began training to be a shochet, a Jewish ritual slaughterer. As a rabbinical student who is passionate about culinary traditions, I felt that I was profoundly disconnected from the source of my food. Influenced by Maimondes’ dictum, which states, “Anyone who desires to eat meat must take the responsibility to procure it”, I felt that the challenge, though daunting, could help me relate to my food and the source of life in a more meaningful way.
After weeks of studying Jewish legal codes relating to schitah, the rabbi informed our small group that he would be bringing a few chickens to our next class. Later that week when we met, the rabbi opened the cardboard box holding three young birds.
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