This past September I started “Your Health is on Your Plate” [http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com] to help prevent diabetes and obesity by teaching folks how to tell the difference between real food and manufactured calories.At “Your Health is on Your Plate,”I encourage readers to restore traditional methods of food selection andpreparation. I focus on health, sustainability, and resource conservation.
Agriprocessors, America, Coffee, Eco-Kashrut, Food History, Food Safety, Food Writing, Grocery, Health, Honey, Kosher, Obesity, Parve, SupermarketsThe raid on the kosher meat-processing plant in Postville, Iowa, threw us a bone in the shape of a vigorous new debateon whether it is fitting and proper to designate as “kosher” products made without regard for animal welfare, fair wages,and the environment. To these I would add human health. What does it mean to approve the manufacture and distribution of products that are known to compromise the health of those who consume them? Is there a distinction to be made between contaminantsthat do their work quickly, like salmonella, and those whose destructive effects are slow and cumulative, like trans fats?
America, Film, Food Safety, Food Writing, Global Warming, Hazon, Health, Most Controversial Posts, Most Inspiring Posts, Region, Sustainability, Waste, Water
This week, as Earth Day came and went and I attended a fair here or an Earth celebration there, it also donned on me that Spring is here!
So, beyond my environmental excursions, I also attended of variety of events held on my very own Columbia University. Yet, what I found was an inability to fully appreciate some of the events due to the ubiquity of plastic water bottles. Some may laugh, but I find myself becoming more and more annoyed with these obnoxious bottles that I suddenly see everywhere. As I have previously written about bottled water, my awakening began when seeing the movie “Blue Gold: World Water War’s” on instant play on Netflix. Then, I really became irked when seeing “The Story of Bottled Water,” which I posted on this blog.
Bread, Cooking, Dairy/Vegetarian, Food Writing, Holiday Dishes, Jewish Culture, On The Web, Pesach/Passover
“This is the bread of affliction”, my father would drone every Passover as he opened the familiar blue square box. “Matzah is tasteless and dry, not meant to be enjoyed. Eating it should remind you of the sufferings of our people.” As he went on and on and on with his yearly lecture on the harshness of slavery and unleavened bread I sat there slathering on salted butter, devouring sheet after sheet of crispy goodness. Although bland and stomach binding, this so-called ‘bread of affliction’ was a welcome change to the squishy, faintly chemical smelling Wonder loaves my mother bought the rest of the year. Despite the family mandate that matzah eating required a certain degree of complaining to make it religiously significant, my appreciation for the magical combination of flour, water, and fire was born.
Where I grew up in the Midwest during the 1970’s there were only two kinds of matzah available. Manishewitz and Streit’s. Both perfectly square and almost identical in taste, matzah was matzah; or so I thought. It was not until decades later at a community Seder that I discovered that matzah could be round, organic or made from non-white flour.
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-Gimenez’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.
Cheese, Cooking, Food Conference, Food Writing, Hazon, Honey, Neat Projects, Personal Story, Preserving
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:
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.
Books, Contest, Cookbooks, Cooking, Family & Kids, Farmer's Markets, Food Writing, Fresh Frum the Kitchen, Obesity, Sustainability, Vegetarian
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.
