Yesterday, Hazon organized a conference call with Rabbi Morris Allen for our staff, board, and volunteer leaders of our food programs. Rabbi Allen is the founder of Hekhsher Tzedek, and and just came back from visiting Postville, Iowa along with his daughter, fellow Rabbi, Harold Kravitz, and his daughter, and the chair of Allen’s synagogue’s social justice committee.

We asked him to brief us on the current situation with Agriprocessors, the mood in Postville, and the Jewish response - from an on-the-ground perspective.

This is what he saw and reported: Read more »

Rabbi Rebecca Joseph is a conservative rabbi, a cultural anthropologist, and a Tuv Ha’Aretz member! Her blog, The Parve Baker is filled with delicious recipes and (equally delicious) words of Torah. Over the summer, she will spearhead The Jew & The Carrot’s “Unboxed” segment - periodic posts that aim to demystify summer’s most seasonal produce.

A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my cousin who lives year-round in a largely rural, but fast-developing part of Bucks County in southeastern Pennsylvania. Beth is a great cook and friendly with several local farmers. We stopped by Jim and Kathy Lyons’ Blue Moon Acres for organic micro-greens and spent a morning in the lavender fields at Carousel Farm with another organic grower, Niko Christou. At None Such Farm Market, which sells produce grown across the road and on other nearby farms, we acquired asparagus and rhubarb, the true harbingers of harvests-to-come in the Northeast.

Read more »

It’s true. As mentioned in a previous post, this summer corporate behemoth, Wal-Mart, is jumping on the “eat local” bandwagon. According to the state of Maine’s official website:

The Maine Potato Board, Wal-Mart Supercenters, Bushwick Potato Company, and Guerrette Farms have embarked on a campaign to bring the freshest tablestock potatoes to Maine consumers. Wal-Mart Supercenters across the state will feature ten-pound bags of potatoes with the “Get Real, Get Maine!” logo.

The irony of one of the largest, community-crushing corporations supporting local farmers is not lost on me. But over the last few years Walmart has made strides to clean up its act (or it’s bad image, which has at least some of the same impact as cleaning up its act) - donating money to charitable causes, and engaging in sustainability work. According to the Maine website, Wal-Mart’s Vice President of Produce, Ron McCormick could have been quoting a locavore activist when he said, “It’s important to Wal-Mart to support local growers…”

Maybe Wal-Mart has heard the siren call of the booming local foods movement, or maybe their head honchos’ hearts are in the right place. But do locavores really want Wal-Mart batting on their team?

Read more »

Thanks to Melissa Boteach for this Jewish look at The Farm Bill. Melissa is the Poverty Campaign Coordinator for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The views expressed here are her own, and do not represent the policy of JCPA.

Last week, both the House and Senate passed the 2007 Farm Bill by veto-proof majorities. This was the culmination of over a year and a half of work by the domestic anti-hunger community, who worked vigorously to ensure a robust nutrition title with improvements and increased funding to food stamps and emergency food assistance.

Some question whether its passage is a victory or a failure. After all, the Farm Bill is not a perfect piece of legislation. There has been an unending parade of opinion pieces written about its shortfalls. Among other things, its critics argue, it continues a system of payments to American farmers that distort world trade, undermine small farmers in developing countries, and frankly, just don’t make much policy sense. It has been denigrated as a scam, a testament to the way in which special interests dominate American politics.

But tell that to the millions of low-income Americans who will receive an increase in their food stamp benefit.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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.

Read more »

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 (Gefen Publishing House Ltd, Jerusalem, 2007). Check out Chana’s first post - and keep your eyes open for a chance to win a copy of her book!

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?

Read more »

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). Update: Congratulations Debra!

More and a recipe below the jump.

Read more »

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!

Read more »

I am beyond mortified. I think I missed out on my chance to join a CSA this year.

For three years, I ran Hazon’s Jewish CSA program, Tuv Ha’Aretz. During that time, CSA-related thoughts (vegetables yes, but also spreadsheets and volunteer coordination, and organizing Shabbat potlucks, and donating leftover produce to soup kitchens, etc.) dominated vast swaths of my brain, crowding out other important information like friends’ birthdays and the need to wash my bath tub.

I would complain regularly - even daily at certain times of the year - about people who could not get their act together in time to register for a CSA. Outwardly I was compassionate, of course, but inside I had no sympathy for those people who would send me frantic emails the night before vegetable pick ups started asking, “Is it too late to sign up?” What did they think this was, Fresh Direct?

After all that experience, you’d think I’d be a pro at signing *myself* up for a CSA. The first gal to send in her check, right?

Ehh..well…no. Read more »

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…

Read more »

If you haven’t yet seen the “things white people like,” website - well it’s probably best not to admit it to anyone and just sneak a peek here. The unavoidable “things Jewish people like” spin-offs (here and here) are pretty great too - not surprisingly, “buffets” top the list.

One of the lists claims that Jewish people like “taking sides on the Hydrox/Oreo debate.” Yeah…yeah, it’s true.

Any Jewish child reared in the 1980s (and likely the 1970s, but I can’t vouch for that) can remember the plate of Hydrox cookies that graced the shul social hall after services. They sat there stoically, the stand-in for their more popular, but lard-filled cousins, Oreos. Hydrox reigned the kiddush table until Oreos ditched the pig fat and got kosher certification in the late 1990s. Twas the touch of death for Hydrox, which was discontinued in 2003.

Still, some nostalgic Jewish cookie lovers insist that the Hydrox is a superior cookie that simply got a bum deal. Personally, although I do have a soft spot for Oreos (I’ve been known to eat half a bag in times of emotional trauma - a practice I don’t recommend!), I’ll generally take an organic Newman O (mint flavored) over an Oreo any day. What about you? Which chocolate sandwich cookie - past or present - tugs on your Jewish heartstrings?

What would you say if someone offered you a box of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables delivered to your home every week? Ella Heeks is willing to wager you might be interested.

Heeks is the Managing Director of Abel & Cole, an Organic Delivery Service in England. Through Abel & Cole, customers order a weekly bounty of pesticide-free produce and schedule its delivery to fit into their busy lives. It’s convenience and ethical eating, waiting patiently on the porch.

While you can find Organic Delivery Services in most American cities, Brits have taken a particular liking to their weekly veg box - and also to ODS pioneer Abel & Cole. 30-year old Heeks spoke with The Jew & The Carrot about working with an idealistic company, soaking up farmer wisdom, and Able & Cole’s response to some customer’s requests that they boycott Israeli-grown produce. Read more »

No, it’s not a bundt cake - it’s a GIANT FALAFEL!

See how this chickpea wonder was created, over at Flickr.