This is cross-posted at The Fink Farms Dirt.

A cabbage harvest in July?

In California, it works. (We planted late in a mild winter.)

That means just in time for outdoor Shabbes dinners, we have the basic ingredient for coleslaw.

But with this gem-like vegetable sitting on my kitchen counter, I couldn’t bear the thought of traditional coleslaw: cabbage shreds drowned in mayonnaise and sugar. I decided to celebrate the color.  The following recipe is adapted from several sources.

1 head of red cabbage, thinly shredded

1 small bunch of cilantro, chopped

1/4 large red onion, finely sliced

1 red bell pepper, seeds removed, thinly sliced

1 cup thinly sliced celery (preferably from the leafy tops)

2 large cloves garlic

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (a hot, honey mustard would work as well)

2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons of sugar, honey or agave syrup (optional)

Blend or whisk together the mustard, vinegar, mayonnaise, sugar, chopped cilantro and chopped garlic in a bowl.

In a large bowl, toss together the shredded cabbage, red pepper, red onion and celery. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss again. This slaw tastes best if it is allowed to chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

If served at a dairy dinner, a half cup of crumbled blue cheese can be added. It tastes great as a salad or as a garnish spooned inside a sandwich.

The dressing isn’t heavy, so the vegetables have a starring role.  The cabbage tastes peppery, so I didn’t add ground pepper or salt. It’s an explosion of color on a plate.

This entry is cross-posted at http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com .

I am pretty excited this morning, because today’s the day that the grounds manager from a small local college is coming over to spend a few hours helping me salvage a row of overgrown, antique quince bushes and convert a small corner of my yard into an edible garden.  I expect that we’ll be working pretty hard, so before he gets here I need to eat breakfast, and that’s what we’ll be discussing today.

Well then, what’s for breakfast?  In one word?  Protein.  In three words?  Not refined carbohydrate.  For more on why not, read here,  here, and here.    When I stayed in a youth hostel in Cairo, Egypt, many years ago, breakfast consisted of steaming bowls of mashed fava beans.  In Germany the breakfast tables were filled with plates of thinly sliced cheeses and meats.  In Israel, we ate soft cheeses, cucumber and tomato salads, and roasted eggplant.  Where refrigeration is less common, people typically eat the leftovers from dinner when they awaken. 

The six major categories of protein include meats, eggs, fish, beans, nuts and dairy.  Now I’m not saying you have to eat them all.  Just pick what you like from among all these choices.  Want some examples?  OK — here goes.

In the meats department, you could have a leftover hamburger.  Or ribs.  Or heat up some chicken wings from last night.  Yes, for breakfast.  In the Midwest, you know, a typical breakfast 150 years ago might have been a pork chop and a cup of coffee with real cream.  They didn’t have a diabetes epidemic then.  Want something more exotic?  Check your refrigerator.  Chopped liver maybe?  Anything goes, from aspic to venison, or veal, if you prefer. 

Don’t care for meat?  What about fish?  There’s smoked whitefish, catfish, tuna (straight from the can if you’re in a hurry), sardines of course, kippered salmon, leftover trout, cod or shellfish, though I expect the chances are slim that you’d find much leftover lobster.  Still…

Eggs.  My favorite, hands down.  Boiled, fried, scrambled, poached.  You can crack one into a little ramekin containing a spoonful of basil pesto. Put the dish into a water bath (loaf pan with 2 inch water) and stick it in the toaster oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  You cannot believe how extraordinary this recipe is until you taste it.

For really busy people, nuts are a mainstay of healthy breakfast eating.  When my children were younger, particularly the one who did not usually appear downstairs until 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come, I would run plastic spoons along the surface of the peanut butter and hand them over, calling them “peanut butter lollipops.”  A short time later, on my own way out, I would collect the empty spoons from the mailbox at the top of the driveway.  Peanuts not your thing?  Try almond butter, or cashew butter.  It’s not cheap, but then again you don’t have to eat it every day.  I also keep a jar of peanut butter at the office for the 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. hungries. 

Then there are the nuts themselves.  If you keep a bag of nuts in the car, you can eat a handful or two on the way to work.  This has to be the easiest way to eat breakfast!  If your excuse is that you don’t have time to eat breakfast, this is the way to go!  Don’t care for peanuts?  No problem.  Try almonds, cashews, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts…did I miss any?  Buy a different kind each time, or make a trail mix from a few.  The more the merrier.  Don’t buy coated nuts.  Make sure to avoid salted nuts, especially if you have salt-sensitive high blood pressure.  You want to buy pure, unadulterated nuts.  I would also suggest storing large bags in the refrigerator or freezer to protect their fragile oils.  They will keep fresh a lot longer. 

Allergic to nuts?  No problem.  Substitute sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.

Now let’s talk about beans.  Maybe there’s some lentil soup in your refrigerator, or a three-bean salad.  If you have refried beans, you could heat them up in the microwave with some cheddar melted on top.  Hummus and tahini are great choices for breakfast.  Scoop them up with slices of cucumber, celery sticks, carrots or even apples. 

What about a burrito?  Is it ok to eat a whole-grain tortilla for breakfast?  Here are your guidelines for eating grain at breakfast time:  If you are 1) diabetic, 2) pre-diabetic (at high risk), or 3) more than 30 lbs. overweight, do not eat grain for breakfast.  Can’t deal with that?  OK, maybe one serving once a week, like at a Sunday brunch, or on another special occasion.  Otherwise, stay away.  It’s making you sick. 

Why?  Because grain requires a ton of insulin to metabolize.  Even whole grain.  Worse, stripped grain requires even more insulin.  Stripped (refined) grain requires an absurdly enormous load of insulin to digest and metabolize.  Remember that insulin works less efficiently in the morning, and that learning to eat smart is all about learning to conserve your insulin.  So if you eat refined carbohydrate at breakfast time, not only are you wasting your body’s insulin, but you are wasting it at the exact time of day when it works worst.  That’s like hitting a man when he’s already down.  Don’t do it.  Eat plenty of fresh produce with your high-protein breakfast instead.  Especially vegetables.

Now, as long as you do not fit into one of the above 3 categories, you should feel free to incorporate some grain into your breakfasts — BUT it must be a whole-grain product. 

Lastly, let’s discuss dairy.  Last week’s post about yogurt works.  So does cheese, and milk.  Less well known, but just as good, are kefir, clabber, and so on.  Goat milk works, just like all the other mammals whose milk is consumed by humans, although not commonly in America.  What kind of cheese?  You name it, as long as it doesn’t contain the words “processed” or “food.”  If someone has to tell you it’s food, it probably isn’t. 

So what did I choose for breakfast?  Leftover guacamole, tomatoes, and 3 generous slices of jarlsberg (a type of swiss) cheese.  A cup of tea with real cream.  And 1 banana for good measure.  Now watch me garden! 

This article is crossposted to Intermountain Jewish News and was written by Chris Leppek.   Photo by Shari Valenta

If you listen carefully, you might hear new and curious sounds emanating from the Denver Jewish community.

Such as a rake drawing its tines through freshly turned earth.

Or a hoe chucking its way through clods and weeds.

Or the hushed plinks of water drops falling from hoses to dirt.

Or, perhaps, even the barely perceptible whisper of a young plant springing forth from a seed in search of sunlight.

Gardens and small farms are appearing in the city in all sorts of unlikely places, including Jewish places — in the shadow of a synagogue, on newly-acquired land that might one day become a Jewish high school, on an empty lot amidst the hustle-bustle of downtown itself.

Although part of a growing national movement that values urban farming, organic food and a philosophical return to nature and hard work, these are Jewish gardens.

They are reminding modern urban Jews of their distant agricultural past. They are reconnecting them with the seasons and cycles of their own ancient religious calendar and providing precious opportunities to honor the commandments of their tradition and faith.

They are, in many ways, helping 21st century Jews rediscover something elusive yet powerful, something essentially human and mystical — the timeless harmony between man and nature.

In physical terms, raising crops is hard and unromantic work. Bringing forth food from the land means getting dirty and sweaty, enduring blistered hands and sore backs, as it always has. It might also mean disappointment and loss when the weather is at cross purposes with the farmer.

But ask any of Denver’s modern urban Jewish farmers whether they regret it when the summer begins to wane into autumn and the first crops are ready for harvest.

As they hold the fruit or vegetable they raised from a seedling in the spring, nurtured and supported during the summer and harvested in the fall, they’ll be happy to tell you that few human victories are as sweet as theirs.

GAN Kehilati is Denver’s first synagogue garden.

In fact, the small plot of land situated on the south side of the Hebrew Educational Alliance is so new that as of early June its small cadre of gardeners hadn’t quite completed the first planting.

HEA member Fred Karp, who came up with the idea of Gan Kehilati — which means community garden — a few months ago, says that this spring’s late snow and cool spell put the farmers a bit behind schedule.

Karp, a Denver attorney by trade and a longtime home gardener by avocation, chuckles, perhaps at how agricultural he sounds after only a few weeks in the dirt.

The HEA garden seemed to be an idea whose timing was perfect, he adds. After coming up with the basic idea, Karp ran it by the synagogue’s board, executive director and rabbi and says he encountered absolutely no opposition along the way.

“The rabbi,” he says of Rabbi Bruce Dollin, “responded very warmly to this idea.”

Rabbi Dollin, in fact, plans to incorporate the idea of the garden into his spiritual leadership, using Gan Kehilati to discuss Jewish perspectives on food, agriculture and related subjects.

Karp uses such modest phrases as, “It’s so small as to be almost experimental this year.” Yet, his pride in the new garden project is obvious.

Composed of six raised beds about 12 by 5 feet each, the garden is located on empty land between the synagogue and the Thomas Jefferson High School baseball field.

A “sort-of” committee of HEA members have signed onto the garden project and have already done a good deal of work, Karp says.

The volunteers roto-tilled the plot and helped set up an automatic irrigation system of drip and soaker hoses connected to strategically positioned spigots. The crops are varied and their selection is left up to the planters. So far, Gan Kehilati boasts budding crops of peppers, tomatoes, watermelons, cucumbers, brussel sprouts, broccoli and herbs.

Karp says not to expect a gigantic harvest, at least not this year.

“I don’t think there’s going to be an awful lot of food,” he says, ‘but this is part of a larger idea of investigating food. Rabbi Dollin plans to do some teaching on the Jewish aspects of farming and food. And if there is any surplus food, we’ll be likely to donate it to the JFS food pantry or the food pantry at New Life Fellowship on Iliff.”

If the idea catches on — and Karp hopes that it will — next year’s harvest might be considerably larger. There is additional land available and the synagogue is already discussing the idea of garden expansion.

Karp is asked why any of this is important.

“It’s good to know the sources of our food,” says Karp, “It’s local, it’s fresh and it’s nominally organic. There’s also the fact that some of these foods will be vegetables that we’re not necessarily familiar with from grocery stores. There will be a variety of things that we wouldn’t be likely to shop for.”

The educational dimension, both in the practical and spiritual dimensions of farming, is of considerable value, in Karp’s view.

“Learning will take place on two levels,” he says. “Less experienced gardeners will be shown how to create a bed and how to begin and care for plants. Local experts will be invited to teach both basic and advanced lessons in growing, from soil preparation to seed saving.”

Gan Kehilati is part of a larger food focus at HEA, which ties in with the national Conservative movement’s new ethical hechscher program and a ‘CSA’ (community supported agriculture) movement that is gaining momentum nationally and locally.

The congregation is teaming up with Temple Sinai on a CSA arrangement with Grant Family Farm, setting up a subscription-like system by which members regularly acquire fresh produce from a regional farm.

Karp adds that another source of inspiration for HEA’s nascent team of farmers is the example set by the early settlers of Israel, the halutzim, who often worked in agriculture, a critical realm for the nascent Jewish state.

“There is an identification with those people,” Karp says. “It’s not life and death for us like it was for them, but there’s still an identification.”

Ekar is Denver Jewry’s largest — and only — farm.

There’s really nothing else to call some two acres of newly tilled and planted land.  Located on previously unused land owned by the Denver Academy of Torah — and possibly destined in the future to become the site of a high school — Ekar itself could expand as time goes on. The vacant lot is a total of five acres, and might soon all be cultivated.

The idea for a farm adjoining an Orthodox day school came from several sources, says Ilan Salzberg, a volunteer with a farming background who more or less manages and oversees the farm.

“It came from a lot of places. There were people from DAT who said, ‘Hey, we have this piece of land, let’s do something with it.’ There were people at DAT who were interested in the garden because of the food movement as a whole. Rose Community Foundation was interested in pushing the food movement forward. There were a lot of people who wanted to see something happening in food.”

A former organic vegetable farmer from Boulder, Salzberg is a law school grad and former realtor. He’s Jewish, but has no formal ties with DAT besides having friends there.

He was planning to be a stay-at-home dad after his twins were born last December but grabbed the opportunity to become a volunteer farmer when he was contacted through the RCF Roots & Branches group.

“I was thinking that this is something that I have the skill set to do,  I have the time to do, and it’s the kind of thing that I could give to my twins that would have more value than money,” he says about Ekar and his willingness to work the land without pay.

The largest part of Ekar is the actual farm, which occupies the eastern part of the plot. Most of the crops raised here by volunteers will be donated to the Jewish Family Service food pantry. A few people are also buying $180 memberships which will give them the right to harvest for their own consumption.

Other funding events will help sustain the farm. On July 25, for example, Ekar will participate in “Prep for the Schlep,” a 16-mile roundtrip bicycle ride from Ekar to Delaney Farm to the east, to help raise funds.

The farm’s first crop includes tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, onions, squash, melons, zucchini, pumpkins and a small patch of lettuce.

Lettuce, Salzberg explains, makes him nervous because it has to be harvested with knives and many of the harvesters are expected to be children. It is one example of how running an organic, family-oriented and volunteer-driven farm can be a tricky business.

Salzberg expects this fall’s Ekar harvest to be quite impressive.

“The goal is about $200,000 worth of produce from this site,” he says. “This year will be less because it’s our first year and the soil is still not that great. I use that number to give people an idea what’s coming out of here. Over time, we can probably continue to up that number.”

Although Ekar’s crops will be technically organic — meaning grown without chemical fertilizers or insecticides —  it’s unlikely that the organizers will actually seek certification of that.

Such formalities don’t really mean that much to Salzberg and the rest of the farm’s supporters. He’s not particularly enamored with the whole organic food movement or the “Jewish food movement,” for that matter.

“To me, eating is fundamental,” he says. “It’s nice to know where you are. For me, very selfishly, I want my kids to know where they are and what they’re coming from. And where you are and what you’re coming from is the dirt that’s around you.

“It’s climate. It’s location. All of those things that make you feel very deeply human are part of the growing process. I know it’s spring because little green sprouts are coming up, because of the way the air feels in the morning. You feel far more connected when you have a seed in the ground. When it snows in May and you’ve got tomatoes in the ground, it snows on you. You feel it in a way that you don’t when you’re just sitting in your condo or townhome or house. I feel that those are things that make you feel deeply alive.”

It’s also about feeling deeply Jewish, he adds.

“Because I am Jewish and that’s what I know, my way of understanding the seasons is helped by that cycle of time. My connection to the Jewish calendar is very agricultural. It’s not an accident that people eat apples on Rosh Hashanah. Apples are harvested in September. Those connections connect me into my Jewishness in a very fundamental way.”

It’s also about the value of simple hard work.

On a recent cool Friday morning, Salzberg was joined at the farm by fellow volunteer and executive committee member Eli Goldstein who, thanks to a recent stretch of business success, is spending much of this summer toiling away in the garden.

Asked what his role at Ekar is, Goldstein replied simply: “I work.”

“I love working with my hands,” he elaborates. “I love being outdoors. I love getting dirty. I really enjoy having people come out here and seeing the satisfaction on their faces when they’re finished. I like being a part of making that possible instead of staying at home and doing sales. I much prefer getting a little burn and maybe some dirt on me.”

He smiles and prepares to go back out into the field.

“It’s pretty much as simple as that.”

Salzberg echoes his colleague’s appreciation for the nobility of physical labor out in the fresh air.

“I feel that there’s a deep value to working,” he says. “You see these kids coming out and they just love it. They want nothing more than to fill up a wheelbarrow and run it around. That’s really cool.”

Tiri’s Garden is Denver only downtown garden.

Nestled at the corner of 15th and California Streets in the heart of Denver’s business district, it is 8,000 square feet of aesthetically landscaped and meticulously maintained greenery amidst towering skyscrapers and honking rush hour commuters.

Technically, it is not a Jewish garden, since its primary beneficiaries are homeless children of all backgrounds, but its progenitor and backer, Christie Isenberg, is Jewish, as is Evan Makovsky, the real estate developer who is allowing his vacant land to be used as a garden.

Not to mention the golden Jerusalem limestone used in the garden’s center, an arbor-covered seating area that seems perfectly suited for some serious meditation.

Tiri’s Garden has already had one growing season under its belt. It produced its first harvest in the fall of 2009 after Isenberg, the wife of Denver hotel baron Walter Isenberg, convinced Makovsky that she had a pretty good idea for vacant property that would, in better economic times, constitute prime commercial real estate.

“He had this empty land just sitting there,” says Isenberg.

It’s probably not a permanent arrangement, she acknowledges. When the economy picks up and development gets going again, she expects the garden will have to find another location, which she fully intends to do.

“We work with a lot of non-profits in Colorado,” Isenberg explains, “and Urban Peak happens to be one of them. We thought this idea would be good for the city and also for Urban Peak.”

Urban Peak is a shelter for homeless children in Denver, offering them school, room and board. Isenberg felt the children could learn a lot about farming and healthy eating habits while helping at the garden and the produce would help supplement their diets there.

It seemed a classic win-win situation.

Isenberg, however, wanted to take it a step further.

She says that she finds many urban gardens to be rather unsightly places, often not very well kept. She is also aware that downtown is a very image-conscious part of town. Tiri’s Garden sits directly across from the Hyatt hotel and near a lot of upscale downtown housing, so it was important that it look nice.

Which it certainly does, with its raised planting beds, gravel pathways, teak benches, pagoda-style arbors, sundial and wrought iron fence.

“We did not want it to be overgrown,” she says. “We wanted it to be manicured. We were very conscious of how it looked.”

Designed by Europa Landscaping, which used many donated materials, and planned with the assistance of Denver Urban Gardens, Tiri’s Garden is currently growing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables — squash, beans, lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes and more.

“We try to plant what will be easy for the kids to harvest,” Isenberg says.

While Europa performs regular maintenance, the Urban Peak kids are at the garden on a regular basis, helping to plant, weed and harvest.

“It really gives them a sense of ownership in the garden,” Isenberg says.

THERE are any number of corollary benefits, she adds.

“I think that people need to eat healthier and I think a lot of schools were not providing that. People are growing much more conscious about that and I think that this will all help tie into that. Several studies show that kids who work in gardens become much more aware of eating healthy.

“I also know that with Urban Peak, when they were working in the gardens they were getting better grades. It gives them a sense of pride when they’re eating what they’re growing.”

The name of the garden comes from Tirunesh — nicknamed Tiri — the four-year-old Ethiopian girl the Isenbergs adopted last year. “We actually named the garden in her honor before we picked her up last year,” her new mother says

Their daughter thinks the garden named in her honor “is pretty special,” says Isenberg, “and she thinks she’s pretty special too. In fact, she says, ‘That’s my garden.’”

Tiri has been to the garden several times and has enjoyed watching the other children working in it. The idea for Tiri’s Garden didn’t come from a personal passion in gardening, admits Isenberg, who works as the director for the Concert for Kids charity in Denver.

“I like to play around with flowers in the yard,” she says, “but I don’t actually have time to garden.”

Nonetheless, the value of urban gardening is certainly not lost on her. She is already working with Denver Public Schools to set up similar garden plots on DPS property in several locations. She would like to have school curricula harmonize with the operation of the gardens.

“The plans aren’t yet finalized, but we’ve already targeted a couple of schools,” Isenberg says. “We’d like to next year hopefully have three to four of them underway. There are so many positive things that come out of it.”

A long-time reader of The Jew and the Carrot, it’s easy for me to see the importance and power of conversations within the Jewish community regarding eating, nutrition, food politics, and sustainability. However, the Jewish imperative for justice does not allow us to stop at environmental or personal levels. Rather, we have to continue our pursuit of justice to ensure that everyone has access to fresh, seasonal produce, healthy food options, and the skills to prepare healthy meals. The Nourishing Kitchen of New York City is an organization working to do just that for the East Harlem community.

Founded in 2008 as a “healthy soup kitchen,” The Kitchen is the only emergency food organization providing nutritionally balanced food for immune-compromised individuals struggling with diabetes, obesity, and malnutrition. East Harlem has one of the highest rates of hunger as well as the highest rate of obesity in New York City, with 62% of the population reported overweight or obese. The East Harlem community also has the densest concentration of diabetes in any borough. These apparent contrasts can be explained by the heavy presence of affordably-priced yet nutritionally void fast food and the scarcity of affordable fruits and vegetables.

The Nourishing Kitchen has expanded its mission in an effort to incorporate healthy eating into clients’ everyday lives. In addition to a hot meal service, The Kitchen offers a food pantry, produce distribution, nutrition classes, and yoga classes – all free and open to the community.

A foundation stone of The Kitchen is not just providing food for low-income clients, but connecting an otherwise marginalized and underserved community with the green movement. As the only certified green soup kitchen in the country, The Kitchen does this primarily through the use of a number of community garden plots. The produce harvested in these plots is served in our hot meals and distributed in our Urban Free Produce program. The Kitchen also runs educational programs and events that expose the community to recycling, composting, seasonal eating, and growing their own produce at home.

One of The Kitchen’s most important projects is the Junior Chef program, a summer program that takes kids ages six to thirteen and gives them hands-on culinary and nutrition workshops. This program was created to connect underserved and undernourished youth to the culinary arts while educating participants and their families on issues of nutrition and wellness. In addition to direct training, participants receive ingredients and recipes to prepare meals at home with their families, plus a local gym membership to engage in physical activity. Through this curriculum, participants learn how to protect themselves and their families from the threat of diabetes and obesity raging in their neighborhood while having fun and gaining comfort in the kitchen.

I’m writing about this organization today because The Nourishing Kitchen (specifically the Junior Chef program) needs your help. The Kitchen is currently a finalist in the national Post Grant for Good Health for $25,000 to support and expand the Junior Chef program. The catch is that it all depends on votes. Each person can vote once per day until July 12 and the winner will be announced on July 22. It takes less than a minute of ‘e-volunteering’ a day, just one click and you are on your way to pursuing food justice for all. Click here once a day to help.

This morning my daughter and I stopped by our neighborhood butcher to buy something to grill tomorrow.� Arriving only 10 minutes before closing, we were absolutely astonished to discover that just a few packages of chicken remained, along with some knockwurst and hamburgers.� Not a single steak, roast, chop or rib.�

It seems odd, but we celebrate Memorial Day by eating meat.� It�s a meat lover�s holiday.� Is this a good thing?� Despite the U.S. dietary guidelines, which recommend eating less red and processed meat, I think eating meat is a fine thing.

Dr. Renata Micha, of the Harvard School of Public Health, would probably agree.� She published the results of a very interesting experiment in this month’s journal, Circulation.� Dr. Micha�s team contacted the authors of 20 previously published studies about the effects of eating meat (evaluating a total of 1 million adults in 10 countries on 4 continents), and asked them to go back and separate the results of their raw data into processed (smoked, cured or salted) and unprocessed meat.� All the meat contained similar amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol.� The researchers found that eating the equivalent of one hot dog, or 2 slices of deli meat, per day was associated with a 42% increase in the risk of heart disease, and a 19% increase in the risk of diabetes.� But eating twice as much unprocessed red meat was associated with neither.

It is important to note that they are not saying processed meat caused heart disease or diabetes here.� At this point, they are just saying that they saw an association.� This means it may be the processing, and not red meat itself, that is the problem.� Processed meats contain 4 times more sodium, which increases blood pressure, and 50% more preservatives (like nitrates) than unprocessed meat.� Nitrates promote insulin resistance and hardening of the arteries.� You can learn more about the Dr. Micha’s study�here.�

This study and its not-so-surprising results demonstrate a fundamental change in nutrition research.� For a long time, researchers, nutritionists, and government analysts have grouped together various foods in ways that made it difficult to draw conclusions.� Given that they are studying nutrition, it seems to me like a serious oversight.

For example, last year another Harvard University study was published that examined the effects of 3 different diets on mouse blood vessels.� The researchers called the diets �low-carbohydrate, high protein (LCHP),� �standard chow diet (SC),� and �Western diet (WD).�� But they did not explain what they meant by LCHP.� They did not actually explain what they fed the mice.� Did the protein come from grass-fed beef, genetically modified soybeans, or canned cat food?� And what is an SC diet?�� How much carbohydrate, protein and fat are �standard�?� What about the WD?� Did those mice get fried chicken, burgers, iceberg lettuce, soda pop and doughnuts?� Also, what do mice in the wild normally eat?� These are crucial questions if we are trying to draw conclusions from what the mice ate.

A second example comes from the nutrition labels on the packages at the grocery store.� In order to determine the amount of white flour or starch in a product, for example, I must�add together�the fiber and sugar, and subtract that sum from the total carbohydrates.� Determining the polyunsaturated fat content presents a similiar difficulty.� Well, I�m not going to let it worry me this weekend.� I’ll just be grateful that my cousin John came home safely from Vietnam, and then I’ll look forward to a dinner of barbecued chicken, homemade cole slaw and potato salad, and grilled onions, plus some new curly, red-leaf lettuce from our garden.

I come by my interests honestly.� I was reared in a home that still revolves around procuring the highest quality, freshest food.� Growing up on our parents� small New Jersey farm, I worked in the vegetable garden, my brother fed the steer and chickens, and my sister wondered what had gotten into all of us.� After college, I earned a Masters degree in environmental science and worked for an environmental consulting firm.� I spent 2 years in Israel, including 3 months on a kibbutz irrigation team in the Negev.� I entered medical school at Case Western Reserve in 1991.

I am married to Rabbi Eddie Sukol, and we have 3 children, the youngest in high school.� We keep a kosher home, and grow an herb garden by the kitchen door.� Two years ago, with the help of a friend,�we built a chicken coop, and then, last summer, eight beautiful laying hens came to live in it.� I�ve had a compost pile for 20 years, and�a small compost garden besides.��I am happy to report that�my daughter has expanded the garden considerably this year; the last of her extensive collection of seedlings are going into the ground today.��Finally, one of these days I�m hoping to salvage several antique quince bushes that are growing in the brush alongside our house.�

As a general internist, I�developed a specialty in the prevention and management of diabetes and obesity.� How bad is it?� If current trends continue, an appalling 30% of the children born in America in 2000 are predicted to become diabetic.� In other words, the typical American diet and lifestyle cause diabetes in 30% of the general population, and up to 50% of select subpopulations.� At work, I teach at-risk patients how to identify real food and craft meals that are healthy and satisfying.� �It�s not your problem,� I say, �it�s America�s problem, and we�re going to fix it together.��

Underlying my commonsense approach to life is a deeply held philosophy of connection.� Between living things and their environments, between one growing season and the next.� Compost becomes tomatoes becomes compost.� Children become parents become grand�parents.� The Japanese say that there is beauty in every stage of life, so I leave the dried flowers on orchids to witness the buds and blooms that follow.� There is no beginning and no end.� Everything is connected.� Learning to eat is learning to plant is learning to steward one�s environment is learning to make healthy choices is learning to nurture children is learning to learn again.�

I look forward to working together with my readers and the Jew and the Carrot to improve the quality of the food we eat.

Check out this Cleveland Jewish News article about the new community garden just starting out at Beth El Congregation in Akron. Ellen Botnick and her friends were, in part, inspired by their connection to Hazon on the Israel Food Tour that we cosponsored with Heschel last Novemeber.  As Ellen says “Food connects us to the earth, to each other, and to something much larger than ourselves. We are building community through this garden.”

Mazal tov to everyone in Cleveland who will have the chance to get to get their hands dirty in the garden, harvest the veggies, feed neighbors at Good Samaritan Hunger Center, and eat the food grown from this new garden! We wish you a bountiful harvest.

Click here to read the full story.

PS – Ellen told me there will be plant markers for all the plants, made from wood that was recycled from the jungle gym they converted to a tool shed.  A volunteer routed the names of the vegetables in the wood, and Bonnie Cohen calligraphed the Hebrew names. The Hebrew School children painted Jewish symbols on the markers. Very sweet and sustainable!

Many camps have begun to implement green practices, taking action to decrease their carbon footprint, and impart a positive environmental message to their campers.  Steps have included forgoing paper, plastic, and Styrofoam in favor of using reusable tableware and reducing non-biodegradable waste, using solar power for heating, providing campers and staff with environmentally friendly water bottles, changing light bulbs to reduce carbon emissions, and more!  Several camps have also planted gardens and are teaching their campers about healthy cooking and organics.

This summer a new, innovative, Jewish camp is opening that will make and teach environmentalism as a lifestyle.  Eden Village Camp is a pluralistic, co-ed, overnight camp rooted in the Jewish vision of an environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually connected world.  The camp experience will include organic farming, wilderness trips, natural building and service projects, art, music, and sports.  Campers will have fun while deepening their appreciation for themselves, their communities, and the natural systems sustaining us.  Eden Village is one of six nonprofit overnight camps that will open in summer 2010 as a result of the Specialty Camps Incubator run by the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) and funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Much like its partners and associates, FJC strives to be, and helps its community be, more environmentally conscious.  At the biennial FJC Leaders Assembly, March 14-15, 2010, the Foundation is taking steps to be environmentally-minded.  From sending out invitations made with soy-based inks and printed on 30% post-consumer waste, to limiting the use of handouts, paper, and other materials.  In addition FJC has chosen a hotel that is mindful of being green, will not be handing out bottled water or providing plastic cups (instead, asking everyone to bring water bottles which were sent out in advance), is creating sustainable menus, using naturally grown food, and sourcing as much local food as possible, has been asking registrants what they are doing to help the environment, will hand out reusable bags made from recycled material, and is making recycling bins available all over the conference.

Of the dozens of sessions offered at the Leaders Assembly, one touches on the commitment to environmentalism. The Greening of Your Camp, will address how the treatment of camps and the earth affects campers’ overall summer experience.  It will explore how camps impact the planet, running a camp in a sustainable manner, and how camps can make even more changes than what they are currently doing.

Would you like to attend Leaders Assembly?  Join hundreds of camp staff, community professionals, lay leaders, and philanthropists March 14-15^th, 2010 at the Westin Jersey City Newport, in Jersey City, New Jersey for a singular experience filled with learning, sharing, and innovation.  www.JewishCamp.org/leaders