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

Right now, the dill is taking over my herb garden in its lovely, flavorful and feathery bloom. My attempts to use it don’t usually make a dent in the amount growing, even as I leave plenty to seed next year’s crop, or to share with the next interested gardener. Mostly, I have been cutting it into salads. I could also add it to butter, or make pickles, or hang some upside down to dry. The dill is everywhere, self seeding from beautiful, zebra-colored seeds given to me a few years ago by a patient who also grows startlingly lovely lavender roses.

Good news for all you justice-seeking java-lovers and chocoholics! AJWS has teamed up with Equal Exchange and formed Better Beans – � a new initiative to sell and distribute fairly traded, kosher coffee and chocolate. Better Beans products allow congregations, community organizations and individuals to order high-quality coffee and chocolate while supporting farmers and community cooperatives in the developing world.

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.

One custom I have always liked about Purim (aside from the drunken revelry, of course) is Mishloach Manot, those fun Jewish goodie-bags that people give to each other during this festive holiday.  It’s like Trick-Or-Treating in reverse:  the candy, wine, cookies, etc come to you -no need to go banging on any strangers’ doors.

Surfing Google, I came across a myriad of articles about what one should include in their Mishloach Manot baskets, including a rather heated discussion over “themed Mishloach Manot” on Hashkafah.com.  All these ideas got me thinking like a cunning marketer, and it occurred to me that there is an untapped market for “niche” Mishloach Manot.

So here are a few categories of potential Mishloach Manot ideas targeted to the interests of specific populations to help get this venture started.  (NOTE:  all items included result from intensive focus groups with members of each target audience.)

Open up your kitchen cupboard, grab a handful of common herbs, fruits and vegetables and voila, your own unregulated pharmacy. On Friday, Tamar Lieb shared her knowledge of the medicinal uses of common plants in the workshop “Kitchen Wisdom for Common Ailments.” To use herbs as medicine, you can do everything from eating them to dissolving them in water, honey, sugar, or oil to extract beneficial properties from fresh and raw plants. I’ve included her long list of beneficial herbs and their properties here (it’s even alphabetized!)

To use waters for your herbal preparation, you can make an infusion (pouring boiling water over delicate things like flowers or leaves) a decoction (boiling harder things like bark or certain dried roots), or use steam. The smell of a plant is its volatile oils escaping, so when you’re making tea, Lieb suggested, keep it covered while it steeps. In a steam bath, made by pouring boiling water over your more delicate herbs (think the pizza spices – oregano, rosemary, basil, thyme – for a cold) and then placing your face, under a towel and over the bowl while you breath in the oily, aromatic steam.

Do you love farmers?  Enough to look at them on your wall all year round?

If so, then check out the beautiful calendar for 2009 that Great Performances (a locally-focused catering company in NYC) published.  It features local farmers from Columbia County – truly some gorgeous shots – and all profits will go to farm-to-table education for urban children.

Buy one for yourself or a friend, here, and celebrate local produce throughout 2009!

As a kid, anything edible held my attention. Sukkahs, charged with dappled light and dedicated to the harvest, seemed to combine all of my interests into one sacred space. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt, standing alone in the autumn-smelling sukkah, under a ceiling hung with fresh, growing foods; and I’ll never forget my disappointment, year after year, at the sight of apples, squash and blue corn wizening and rotting on their strings.

Now that I’m a full grown canner, it occurs to me that the sukkah, with it’s commandments for good air circulation, more shade than light, and it’s tradition of hanging edibles, is a perfect place to preserve for the cold months. After all, turning sukkot decorations into food is already a tradition—Etrogs make it into wine or brandy after the celebration’s over.

Below, you can find some tips and recipes for celebrating God’s gift of food and shelter through the year.

Yom Kippur stirs my strongest Jewish food memory – it’s strange, but true. Since I was in the single digits I can remember walking to Ne’ila services with my mother and father, carrying a bag filled with two essential components of our holiday inside. One was a three-pound sack of apples, the then ubiquitous McIntosh variety. The other was six or so tiny butter sandwiches on my mother’s anise bread.

The bread was a high, oblong loaf shining from egg glaze and redolent of liquorice, which I despised as a child. On our walk, I would watch the plastic sack of break-fast food thumping against my father’s trousered leg, a reminder that holy space of Yom Kippur was about to close over us and leave us to our good intentions and the rest of the year. I couldn’t understand why they liked it so much, that sweet, seeded bread. (Now, of course, I know better.)

A few months ago I wrote some tips on appropriate and helpful ways to bring food to someone who’s ill or grieving.  At the time, my mother (that’s her in the picture, with me at our dining room table in happier times) was in treatment for terminal cancer, and though we were grateful to have an amazing community providing food for us during such a difficult time, I often found myself guiltily throwing out some leftovers that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge to make room for new offerings.  I suggested that people try to bring smaller portions.

Then, on September 9th, my mother passed away, and what had been a slight excess of food transformed into a mountain of baked goods, stacks of trays from kosher restaurants, and Tupperware as far as the eye could see.  From the very first day of shiva we were completely overwhelmed with food, and the same women who were coordinating people to bring us meals were having to sort through the fridge and toss or freeze the obscene amount of casseroles, cakes and random snacks that people were bringing when they came to visit with us.

One of the rules of sitting shiva is that the mourners should not prepare their own food, so we had expected to have meals for the week made and prepared by others, but we were not prepared for the sheer quantity of what we ended up with.  Among other things, we ended the week with an ant problem in our kitchen because there was so much food sitting out all the time.

Over all, I found shiva to be a difficult but incredibly healing week, and it was wonderful to have so many people showing us their support in so many ways.  Still, it frustrates me to see so much food go to waste, and some of the craziness that resulted from having other people run my kitchen for a week was no fun at all.  So, here’s some new tips and thoughts on bringing food to a shiva house.

Tips after the jump!

Did you ever wish that you could create an energy bar with just the right nutritional ingredients, that tasted great, and was (mostly) kosher and organic? How about if the company that made them gave a percentage of their profits to a local foodbank? How about if the company was a mother and son who started out in the kitchen of their synagogue? 

Check out this great story in the NYTimes, and head over to youbars.com if you feel like creating (and naming!) your very own Powerbar.   

Valentines Day is coming up this Thursday – and while it’s not a Jewish holiday per se, it’s as good a day as any to remind the people in your life that you think they’re pretty freaking awesome.  To help you express your loving sentiments – the sustainable way – The Jew & The Carrot offers our newest resource list:

Kosher Sustainable C.H.O.C.O.L.A.T.E

Chanukah starts next week – don’t let the opportunity to give meaningful, sustainable gifts to your loved ones pass you by.  Check out The Jew & The Carrot’s Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide for creative, eco-friendly gift ideas for *nearly* everyone on your list.

And – as thanks to our wonderful readers, The Jew & The Carrot teamed up with Thou Shall Snack to offer a special Chanukah gift to you - the chance to win a free gift basket filled with delicious and healthy goodies from Thou Shall Snack.

Click here and enter by December 5th for your chance to win.

Chanukah, Hanukkah, or Hanukah – however you spell it, it’s on it’s way. The festival of lights starts early this year on December 5th.

The Jew & The Carrot offers you the opportunity to give sustainably this year with the Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide!

If you’re not into giving Chanukah gifts, make all your own gifts, or a die hard re-gifter, more power to you. But if you’re looking for something special and sustainable for your friends/family/CSA farmer/yoga instructor/pet etc. this is the list for you.

What do you get when you cross:

-A blend of 28 cocoas (including 14 of the most expensive and exotic around the globe)
- 5 grams of edible 23-karat gold, served in a goblet lined with edible gold
- 18-karat gold bracelet at the bottom of the goblet (with 1 karat of diamonds)
- Whipped cream covered in more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle, which sells for $2,600/pound?