Counting the Homer

Last year, I posted about the connection between beer, civilization and the Jewish people’s journey from Egypt to Sinai during the period of the omer.

This year, just as the counting of the omer began, I came across this article, which is a survey of contemporary authors concerning which beers they would pair with their novels! Some authors picked beers that matched the characteristics of their writing (”dark, with biting overtones,” etc.). Others chose more figuratively. For example, Michael Chabon responded, “The proper pairing with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union would of course be a nice cold bottle of Bruner Adler lager, brewed right in the Federal District of Sitka by Shoymer Brewing, Inc.”

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I’ve been working on a few bread projects lately: sourdough starter, and the no-knead focaccia-style bread recipe from the NY Times last year. Today, I completed a successful merger and the result? Only half a loaf left, after my parents & I were through with it at dinner.

The no-knead recipe goes something like this: wet dough + long time to rise = big air bubbles. Home-bakers tend to be more familiar with the opposite kind of bread, that is, a very elastic, kneadable dough, that rises for 2-3 hours, and gives a dense, fine-crumb loaf. You could come home from work at 4 and still have challah for shabbos at 8 kind of thing. But the air bubbles intrigued me — who doesn’t love french bread! and so I’ve been experimenting.
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I’d like to put in a good word for the DIY folks. DIY (do-it-yourself) might simply conjure images of people who turn sweaters into skirts, make t-shirts, pave their patio with mosaics from old china, or make their own candy bars. But in fact, these people approach the world with the attitude that if the thing in question can be cooked, grown, built, or otherwise pulled off by themselves or a few of their friends, then it’s something they out to be involved in. I’m not sure whether Judaism is inherently DIY—but I do think there’s room for it.

The prevailing philosophy seems to be one of narrowing. Specialize in your field. Corner the market. Find the best possible place to grow blueberries then plant eight thousand acres of them. But actually that attitude is disempowering, because it implies there are so many thing that others can do better than me, I shouldn’t even bother (and, by extension, if there isn’t something I can do better than anyone else, what am I?)

So instead I’d like to suggest a philosophy of dabbling. Read more »

As I enjoy my last week of vacation before I return to New York City for school, my mind starts to wander towards all sorts of issues that didn’t really apply to me in the last year, when I was living in the woods and farming at a Jewish retreat center. The biggest one is paying rent, which I didn’t have to think about in my prime forest real estate (granted, I don’t yet have an apartment to pay rent on, anyone looking for a live-in farmer?).

Another is teaching; in the last year I’ve found that I really enjoy explaining things that I care about, but for the next two years, instead of having a relatively captive audience of Adamanicks to work with and teach, I’ll be a captive audience myself, paying very close attention to my teachers…

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Fermentation is the foundation of warm sourdough bread, crunchy pickles and cold micro-brewed beer.  And Sandor Ellix Katz is, in our humble opinion, the rebbe of fermentation. 

Two weeks ago, Naftali posted a review of Sandor’s book Wild Fermentation.  Now, you can read the exclusive (and incredibly inspiring) interview with Sandor, and answer the following question for a chance to win a copy of his book:  What is your all-time favorite fermented food? 

Interview with Sandor Ellix Katz

Who is Sandorkraut?

Sandorkraut is an affectionate nickname I was given by friends thanks to my love of sauerkraut, my constant production of it, and more broadly my evangelical zeal about fermentation. My name is Sandor Ellix Katz. I’m a queer Jew born and raised in New York City who has been homesteading in rural Tennessee for the past 15 years.

My interest in fermentation developed out of overlapping interests in food, nutrition, and gardening. My book Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods has propelled me into a mission of what I call cultural revivalism, spreading fermentation skills and fermentation fervor.

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It’s a familiar legend - whether it’s the Golem or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (the latter perhaps inspired by tales of the former) - what we arrogantly create comes back to haunt us. America’s monster might turn out to be one that we encounter in its most powerful form each Halloween: corn. Not the sweet, buttery kind that we get from our CSA in July. The kind that industrial-strength petro-chemicals and lobbyist-induced grain subsidies have produced in quantities unfathomable even fifty years ago. As Michael Pollan noted in Omnivore’s dilemma, which so eloquently sounded the clarion call for the dangers of corn, much of this crop has been turned into food additives that are so commonplace that if we’re eating any type of processed food, chances are we’re eating corn, even if we don’t even know it! Read more »

Our Chief Pickler at Adamah, Josh Rosenstein, went on vacation for two weeks — just as the first succession of cucumbers was ripening and ready for harvest. I have stepped in to manage operations while he’s gone. What an unexpected and delightful realm of food learning this has opened up!

Many wisdom traditions teach that each person has within them all the tools they need to live their life. Bernie Glassman suggests in his Zen Buddhist “Instructions to the Cook” that each of us has all the necessary ingredients to cook the perfect meal. And Moses reassures us from Deuteronomy, “Lo ba-shamayim hi” — the truth of the Torah is not in heaven, some far off place which we cannot access; rather, it is right here in our midst. With pickles I am learning this simple and beautiful truth all over again.

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(Posted on behalf of Yigal Deustcher -the farmer at Chava V’Adam Farm in Israel, one of Tuv Ha’Aretz’s partner communities. He is also the founder of the Shorashim:Roots program. Photos taken by Tuv Ha’Aretz member, Naomi Marcus.)

I awoke at 5:30 AM and headed to the kitchen where I found Eitan, one of our Shorashim apprentices, dicing the root of Ashwaganda (aka Middle Eastern Ginseng) to make a medicinal tincture.

Eitan has just finished the pilot season of Shorashim:Roots - 5 month intensive housed by Chava v’Adam, an ecological education center outside Modi’in. Our apprentices live and work in a rustic setting, secluded by the rocky, sparsely forested hills hugging our little valley. Much of the work is agriculturally-based, cultivating 5 bio-diverse plots for the needs of our CSA community. All of the buildings are built with stone or mud. The water from our showers & sinks are cleansed by our greywater wetland system. The sounds from the farm can be hectic at times, with busloads of schoolchildren coming to learn about the wonders of plants, animals & mud.

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The next time you pair a satisfying hunk of cheddar cheese with warm, crusty bread and wash it down with a cold micro-brew, give thanks.  Thanks to God, yes, but also thanks to micro-organisms.  Without these single-celled critters, these foods (as well as yogurt, wine, and chocolate) couldn’t exist.

Fermenting-Connoisseur and author of The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Sandor Katz, says: “I meet so many people who have a memory of a grandparent who had some sort of an annual fermentation ritual, whether it was making sauerkraut, making wine, making pickles. Really until 50 years ago, 75 years ago, it was really, really common at the household level for people to ferment some of their foods.”

Katz’s new book profiles fermenters, as well as other food activists (who also fall into the category of “little guys” who deserve some thanks),who are sowing the seeds of the movement against the food industry.

Read an interview with Sandor in Grist here.