Last week, my coworker Judith came into the office, excited about a seasonal food discovery she’d made.  “I was trying to figure out what to do with all the potatoes I got in my CSA,” she said.  “And I realized - December’s not that far away and potatoes store well…no wonder latkes are a traditional Chanukah food!”

Judith’s epiphany links her back to the kitchens of our collective Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors, who made food from inexpensive, readily-available ingredients.  What better way to have a delicious, filling meal, than to fry up a bunch of winter root veggies like potatoes?

And, I thought with a swell of “it all makes sense!” elation, what better to top them with than a sauce made of the only fruit that stores as well as potatoes in the winter - apples! Remembering the Hebrew connection put me in even more in a tizzy.  (One of the first things that every Hebrew school student learns is that tapuach means apple and tapuach adamah means “apple of the earth” - potato.)

It was high time, I thought, to make some applesauce.  (Recipe below the jump…)

Organic. Pancakes. In a can.

End of civilization? Or dawn of a new era of enlightened convenience foods?

Discuss.

As Ben, Aaron, and other The Jew & The Carrot bloggers have mentioned in previous posts, this country’s obsession with bottled water has reached epi(demi)c proportions.  We spend 10.8 billion dollars/year on bottled water (and growing), while people in many US cities could enjoy water straight from the tap.  Our addiction adds up – in dollars, in packaging going to the landfill, and in CO2 (from importing water to the US from far off places like Fiji.)

I’m re-doing my 1985 vintage kitchen. A few months ago I ripped the handle off an oven, four burners have never been enough, and the ancient dishwasher is so loud it sounds like a street-cleaning machine. The cabinet veneer is peeling. The wimpy double ovens are horribly slow, poorly callibrated, and situated in a doorway making me turn sidways everytime I try to access them. (Forget about induction — that came much later). I could go on. Take, for example, the white tile floor. Anybody tried to keep a white tile floor clean in a heavily trafficked kitchen? It’s hopeless, and I can’t take it anymore.

The coolest home science experiment ever — no, really EVER — is the home cheesemaking kit. I am just dumbstruck at how nifty this is: A gallon of warm milk, citric acid, a rennet tablet (OU hecshered vegetarian rennet, actually) and poof! Cheese. Stringy gooey mozzarella. Or milky, creamy ricotta.

And it’s so ludicrously easy: perfect for kids since nothing gets warmer than tepid bathwater. They get to stretch and pull the mozzarella to make bocconcini or string cheese. It’s so much fun to play with your food. Milk magic in your kitchen.

Idea and image courtesy of flickr user Rodrigo Piwonka.

Jews have always been good at “repurposing” – pagan agricultural festivals, indigenous artforms, or the latest technology are all fodder for making our Jewish lives richer, more varied, or, well, simply more portable.

(Note: Even “Food-safe” plastics raise multiple health issues. You probably wouldn’t want to make a habit out of carting your lunch around in a container that you got of the shelf at Staples. Still, an entertaining idea nonetheless).

The New Jersey Jewish Standard reports:

This month, [Kosher Vending Industries] will unveil 25 machines serving kosher dairy items for a trial run. The first machines will serve pizza, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, vegetable cutlets, potato knishes, and French fries, at a cost of $3 to $4 per item. The food, all certified by the Kof-K, will come frozen from various suppliers and Kosher Vending will repackage it for its machines. Eventually, Cohnen would like to expand to separate meat machines.

We’ve had our rants about whether one more unenlightened, processed kosher food option actually amounts to a good thing, but not so much has been said about gadgets in general — automats are really cool.

Too bad so many of the options are so bad for you.

“They think we’re going to be bigger than Kraft because of our niche market,” he said.

Dream big, guys.