By Audrey Sasson, cross-posted on From the Ground—the blog of American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

I recently attended an event promoting Eric Holt-Giménez’s new book (co-authored by Raj Patel), Food Rebellions: Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. Eric is the executive director of Food First and a powerful advocate for transforming our broken food system. His presentation unpacked the causes of hunger worldwide and promoted a reinvestment in local food systems as both a just and effective solution.

Avi Rubel is the North American Director of Masa Israel Journey, the umbrella organization for immersion programs in Israel for young adults (18-30). When not sending people to Israel, Avi can be found making cheese, bread, kombucha or fermenting or pickling all kinds of goodies in his Brooklyn apartment and recording his adventures on his food blog, Make Cheese Not War. In the weeks after the Hazon Food Conference, he shared some of his thoughts about his experience with Hazon in California.

Click below to read his posts:

• Preserved Lemons from Joan Nathan
• The Food Conference

Since it is so near Valetine’s Day we thought we’d share this cute website dedicated to writing Valentines to food.  According to the website:

My Food Valentine is a Collective Storytelling project where you can come and express your love for food by writing them a love-letter.

It is [Yaminie Patodia's] thesis project for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. I was interested in exploring the deeper connections people had with food, but in a fun way.

Photos by Phil Mansfield

Every once in a while I feel sorry for myself because my kids won’t eat my lovingly prepared meals; for comfort, I seek out one of my fellow mom’s, specifically those with teen-agers. Invariably they look at me with a withering ‘well let me get you the violins and a stiff drink fast, your poor thing’ stare, reminding me that I am a mere amateur at kitchen rejection. When I hear their tales of trying to feed their teens, my load somehow seems lighter, more manageable. Snarky, picky, and sometimes downright nasty, it is no easy task to manage teens at the table.

Enter Rozanne Gold and her new book, Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs. I sat down with the author and discovered that the book’s appeal to teens is as organic as its recipes. Gold recently adopted a teen-ager and for the past few years they have been coming together as a family, in and out of the kitchen. Her daughter was one of five teen chefs engaged to prepare and test each recipe. Their collective industry and obvious enjoyment is evidenced throughout the book with hands-on pictures depicting their efforts.

Thanks so much to Jay Weinstein, for his great guest post.  Jay is a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, is a New York based food writer, editor, culinary instructor, and cookbook author. His food articles and recipes have been featured in The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, Time Out New York, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Ethical Gourmet, focuses on ecologically sustainable fine foods. He teaches culinary arts at The Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City.

Straight out of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) in 1988, I went to work for Jasper White, the Boston chef who would become my mentor. I still remember how he told me that Atlantic salmon were commercially extinct. We were beginning to use a new salmon raised in a Canadian aquaculture operation that was a cross-breed of farmed Norwegian salmon, and wild Atlantic salmon. “Better half wild than not wild at all,” he quipped.

Since that time, the New England rivers that provided genetic stock for that ‘80s hybrid have suffered the excesses of the salmon farming industry, and the American public has been exposed to the pollution, pesticides, artificial colorants, and epidemics that salmon aquaculture has brought to our shores. We’ve lamented the megaton hauls of wild “feeder” fish dumped into the insatiable maw of the big salmon business, which built salmon into the most consumed fish in America.

While most consumers seem content to keep on buying factory-farmed salmon because it’s cheap, reliably fresh, and inoffensively mild in taste, some eco-savvy Americans who are concerned about the decline of ocean fish, river biodiversity, and humane treatment of animals rail against fish farming as an environmental disaster. Mention farmed fish to them, and they’ll say that wild is the only choice for fish-eaters with a conscience. Fish farming, after all, has done such damage. But there’s a problem with their argument too.

I love cooking big dinners especially when they come with interesting dishes or new culinary challenges.  Thanksgiving has been a favorite of mine for a long time, since I have in part not been celebrating the Jewish food holidays for all that long.   Even when I was college I was whipping up elaborate meals despite limitations to space (one year it was a dormitory kitchen in the basement of the building) or even supplies (I forgot to buy aluminum foil so I improvised by covering my chicken, not a turkey, in applesauce, which by the way kept the meat moist and gave it a slightly sweet flavor).

Living in New York City poses its own set of advantages and challenges.  I mean in New York, you can get anything and usually get it delivered (at least in Manhattan).  I’ve found that mostly to be true – that was until I tried to serve venison for Thanksgiving.

Recently, acclaimed bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer appeared on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show to talk about his upcoming book, Eating Animals. As Julie Steinberg details in her post below, Foer, being both Jewish and a vegetarian, explores issues of food choices and eating meat in a personal narrative that helps shape a larger argument about vegetarianism.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals is not for the faint of heart. His recent article in the New York Times (excerpted from the first chapter) includes stories of his grand-mother, a holocaust survivor, which he uses to define himself as well as frame his book. The Jew and The Carrot’s Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus wrote a nice post about it, including:

“But I what I found most moving was the way he connected his own ethical commitment to vegetarianism to his grandmother’s commitment to kashrut, even under the most extreme circumstances. She gets the last word in the dialogue he recalls,

With the tragic closing of the iconic publication, Gourmet, the already struggling world of food journalism got a bit grimmer.  Fortunately, a few quality food magazines are still up and running – like Saveur, a magazine dedicated not only to delivering delicious recipes, but sharing the food traditions, people and stories behind them.

Well, The Jew & The Carrot must be on an upswing too because recently, Saveur added us as a “Site we Love” on their website!  In other words, Saveur’s editors are handpicking the “best of the food web” to share with their readers – and we got the golden ticket.  Or, rather, the red stamp of approval.  Well Saveur, consider us flattered – and consider yourself invited over for tea any day.

Thanks so much to Zachary Adam Cohen for this great cross-post from Farm to Table.  Zachary is a social media strategist and local foods blogger based in New York City. He blogs at Farm to Table and does some of his best work on Twitter @ZacharyCohen.

I’ve been writing lately a lot about what we in the local foods movement need to do in order to make the next leap. I tell you this, the opportunity is there, and anyone who thinks it is inevitable that we win this war is wrong. We have to work for it, we have to use our resources, we have to muster our numbers and show the true power and force of a people powered, bottom up movement.

The deli has been in the spotlight these days thanks to the work of  David Sax.  You  may have read Joan Nathan’s piece in the New York Times about David’s upcoming book, Save the Deli, a call to action to revive deli culture.  Deli has been in most newspapers and on the radio now and is  the talk of the town in a way it hasn’t been since its golden years thanks to one man with a mission.

Early on for the Jew and the Carrot Leah Koenig wrote a post about David’s deli zeal during David’s journey to eat at delis around the world (which he also chronicled on his blog), and now the Jew and the Carrot is eager to announce a deli contest in the book’s honor. The winner will receive a free copy of Save the Deli.

Just leave us a comment on this post about your most memorable deli meal or experience and your name could be drawn to win a copy of his book.  Last day to leave a comment is Thursday October 22nd and the winner will be contacted the next day.

And while we’re on the subject, the Save the Deli book launch will be held this Monday at Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen.  It will be a great time with remarkable deli kitsch.

After 70 years of publication, Conde Nast is ceasing publication of Gourmet magazine, while maintaining its support of Bon Appetit magazine.  As with many (most?) corporate decisions, it was a precipitous one, announced to its staff on Monday just as the November issue was off the presses.

As an immigrant to this country, I learned about the cultural rituals of my new country through the Girls Scouts manual– obtained from my small, neighborhood library, another American treasure– and later on, the pages of the food magazines.  The National Geographic was too arcane for me, but Bon Appetit broadened my cultural horizons past my family’s tenement apartment in New York’s Chinatown.  It showed me what people really do eat in their own homes and how to prepare their dishes.  It gave me a cultural passport, even before I could afford to travel on my own salary.

You can take kids out of the sukkah, but you can’t take the sukkah out of the kids.  Katja Goldman, author of The Empire Kosher Chicken Cookbook - a book described as changing “the way you think about the kosher kitchen”-   had a dilemma.  Her young twins were not feeling well, too sick to travel, and too sick for the sukkah. As the symptoms worsened it was clear that their freshly-baked challah would be traveling alone to the family sukkah.  Katja, a woman who understands the kitchen’s direct link to a child’s soul, immediately recognized that her children must not be deprived of their treasured sukkah experience.  So they baked one. 

Photo courtesy of Nina Barnett

My love affair with kale actually began in the winter when, desperate for a fresh vegetable I began searching for something in season.  When we began to thaw out admittedly my head was turned by the fresh younger spring vegetables, and I nearly forgot about the deep green leafy goodness I had been putting in my winter soups until one week my CSA box said “one pound baby kale.”

Um, how interesting. What does one do with baby kale? I asked the all-knowing conduit of helpful hints, recipes and if nothing else good suggestions – Google.  The search results mostly suggested I put it into salads but then came recipes for braised baby kale – which basically sounded like tossing the little guys in some olive oil then baking them.