The month Nisan begins tonight and with it, so many associations. Last year, I wrote about the practice of refraining from eating Matzah from Rosh Hodesh Nisan (i.e. tonight) until Passover. Most people make, if any, the association of dreaded Pesach cleaning and preparation. I’ll be writing some about that in a few days or next week, God willing, but for now, let’s stick to things connected specifically to Rosh Hodesh Nisan.

One association fewer people make is that Birkat haIlanot, the blessing over blooming trees, is typically said in the month of Nisan:

Do you love your CSA (or Tuv Ha’Haretz) but also want sustainable products that are not found locally where you live?  Things like olive oil and dates are local to the Mediterranean Sea – not New England.  But for folks in the greater New York area committed to sustainable agriculture, some of our CSAs have recently partnered with a new company that supports small-scale farming and economic development in the Negev Region of Israel.

Negev Nectars, a new business that launched last week, will be bringing gourmet, sustainably produced foods to CSAs (and Tuv Ha’Haretz) to the United States.  Negev Nectars members will be sent olive oil, jams, chutneys, honey, dried herbs and other unique products (check them out here) three times a year just before Hanukkah, Passover and Rosh Hashanah.  Negev Nectars can be shipped all over the U.S., although your share can be picked up at participating sites.  Currently Negev Nectars can be picked up at the Tuv Ha’Haretz in White Plains, NY and Forest Hills, NY with additional sites coming soon in New York and New Jersey.

The Delicious Pie, Sans First Slice

On Sunday night as my mother and I stood outside and began the slow, sad process of dismantling our Sukkah, I started to think about autumn and more specifically, why it ranks as my favorite time of the year. The end of the fall holidays always hit me hard, perhaps even harder than the thought of returning to my daily routine. And yet there I was, shivering in my pajamas and thanking Hashem Almighty that it was fall in New York.

Considering my deep loathing of the snow and my firm belief that the winter should be spent hibernating (with only rare breaks for hot chocolate and cookies), I’m always surprised by my love of its seasonal predecessor. But then I remember that the fall is the start of a brand new year for us Jews. Everything is open before us, and we haven’t had much chance to mess up yet. My favorite flavors come into the Farmers’ Markets: apples, butternut squash, fresh figs, and best of all, pumpkins. And for me, the fall comes with a wonderful combination of those two notions.

Since the next day was Columbus Day (or as I like to call it, the most arbitrary day off of the year), my mother, two of my

Farmer Freed’s Super Easy Cake With Fruit On Top

Mmmmmmmmm

Around this time of year, my kitchen is overflowing with bowls of local apples from my friend’s farms.  On Rosh Hashana, Farmer Leon brought over a few honey crisps which as the name implies are crisp, delicious, and spicy sweet.  I saved a few of these special gems for a break fast cake.  While I was making the cake, my friend Heidi called and said she was making the cake too and her break fast version was featuring peaches and blueberries.  The recipe below can be made with any type of seasonal fruit and as the name says, the cake is super easy to whip up and very delicious.

About three weeks ago I became a tourist in Jerusalem. My family packed up our home in the States, stuffed things in storage, and after one stop-over found ourselves in Ben Gurion Airport. The shiny polished floors of the airport were soon a dim memory as we tried to trespass the littered streets of Jerusalem in the oppressive heat. I kept trying to think up reasons for why the Holy Land seemed dirtier then mid-town Manhattan but those justifications didn’t lift my spirits. It was only when my young children began pointing out the pomegranate trees that were also littered all around my neighborhood that I began to feel a bit better. They are beautiful trees with small green leaves and winding branches. The pomegranates seem like such an obvious object to inspire art, literature, and cooking and not surprisingly, they have done so for centuries.

The pomegranates weren’t the only eatables that got me through the high temperatures, long lines, and jet lag. Pretty much anything wrapped in puff pastry or stuffed in a pita seemed to do the trick.

If my summer were a cookbook, it would be called What to Expect When You’re Expecting— Expecting Company, That Is, and It’s a Heat Wave.

Yes, welcome to life in the global warming oven.  We are on at least heat wave #3 of the summer here in usually temperate Portland, and I’ve had a potluck to attend or guests to host for all of them.  And while the hot weather makes me want to eat ice cream three meals a day, I know I really shouldn’t.

Especially not when “eating” means “bringing to a potluck where it will sit out in the sun.”

So what has been on the menu?  Lots, and I figured I’d share it in case you can’t stand the heat but still need to be in the kitchen.

It’s amazing how when you put something out there, the Universe will respond accordingly.   Lately I’ve been thinking of the trip we took to Israel a couple of summers ago.   More specifically, I’ve been recalling  a meal we enjoyed at a beachfront cafe in Tel Aviv, where  I tentatively ordered a watermelon feta salad.  I wasn’t sure about the flavor combination, but my culinary curiosity was piqued.  I reasoned that it had good potential since the two components of the dish were both items that Israel does well- watermelon and feta.  And, of course, it turned out to be wonderful, a delicious contrast of cool sweet juiciness and salty creaminess.

My family are not big jam eaters. We’ve got assorted jars of various home-made kumquat and quince jams that friends have given us over the past year or so in the back of the fridge. Still, when the fruit on our little old apple tree is showing the first blush of red – before it turns mealy and gets attacked by bugs – I can’t resist cooking up a batch of apple butter and handing it out. Just the smell of simmering apples and spices sends me back to my early childhood in Minnesota and the giant apple tree in our backyard that had seven different varieties grafted on to it. My Mom would spend hours each fall stirring big pots of applesauce and apple butter to put up for the winter.

It seems my earlier pessimism about the threatened value added tax (VAT) on fruits and vegetables was premature. For now, fruit and vegetables will remain tax-free commodities in Israel.

 Was it concern for our health or the state of Israeli agriculture that prompted this turn-around? Not exactly. The Byzantine ins and outs of coalition politics are what saved the day. The Shas religious party, a member of the governing coalition, decided to press the issue, and they refused to accept the offered compromise in which the tax would start low and gradually increase over several years. 

Yesterday was the first day (finally!) of my local farmers’ market here in NJ, and I’ll admit I went a bit fruit happy, coming home loaded with local blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. It took some detective work to figure out what things were not local–the farmer may be Pennsylvania Dutch but those sure aren’t local peaches, not yet. I’m much stricter about eating fruit locally and seasonally than I am vegetables. I can go months without fresh berries or stone fruit, hoping that it counts towards my balanced diet if I eat many servings of fruit in the summer and far fewer in the winter. Sure, there are days towards late February when I am sick of citrus fruit, grapes, and bananas, and look longingly towards the plums flown in from California. But in my heart, I know they will disappoint me.

Rte. 44 is a two-lane rural road more or less in the center of Israel. Coming from Ramla, right before the community of Karme Yosef, sits a square building faced in limestone set back from the road. A modest sign identifies it as Melo Hatene. (The name loosely translates as The Overflowing Cornucopia.) I had passed the building more than once, but had not really given more than a moment’s thought to what this structure – too classy to be a packing shed – was doing in the middle of an agricultural field. It was my sister, stopping to explore while on a bike ride, who discovered what was inside and brought us there.

In the daily inundation of political scandal, violence, government infighting and general economic and social mayhem that we Israelis can’t seem to live without (judging by our consumption of news media), a proposed new tax on fruits and vegetables has garnered little public outcry. 

Until now, fruits and vegetables have been exempt from the 16.5% value-added tax (v.a.t.) placed on nearly every other consumer item. But foods like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplant had been considered basic daily necessities, like bread and milk (both of which are still price-controlled). 

This optimistic article points to an issue felt acutely in “inner cities” around the country: a lack of fresh produce being sold at market.  This problem was controversially or famously addressed in my city by the New York City Green Cart initiative but this certainly hasn’t solved it and plenty of other cities have the same issues (NYC isn’t even mentioned in the article, though LA, Newark and Detroit are, and the article is mainly about Chicago.)  Could it be that looking to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s as examples, however, are more detrimental than good?  As big a supporter of organics as I am, I think encouraging people to eat “conventional” produce would be a big boon over Mickey-D’s and would be a lot cheaper and easier than the “greenest” route.  Even frozen produce makes a nice, healthy, easy and inexpensive meal most of the time.

On Shavuot, when we celebrate receiving the Torah, we also celebrate the offering of the first fruits in the Temple, the bikurim.

The offering was a supremely humble gesture: the fruits which form first on a tree are often smaller, less perfect, only hinting at the abundance to follow. In ancient Israel, these offerings were gussied up, surrounded by the more beautiful fruit which grew later, brought sometimes in gold baskets, accompanied by flutes, processions. All the trappings of art and wealth were used to beautify the offering. Yet without the small, perhaps wrinkled fruit of the bikurim, there could be no offering.

It was at this moment of offering that the Torah teaches us to recite the story of redemption, the same one we now read in our Passover haggadah. The story was also a garland, as it were, for the bikurim offering, connecting our history to the very physical redemption of another spring and another growing season.