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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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! Read more »
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
All of the chocolate bars included on the list are kosher-cerfitied and some combination of organic, fair trade, cane-sugar sweetened, and vegan. (sweet!) If you want to put that chocolate bar to even better use, check out Chef Laura Frankel’s amazing recipe for chocolate mousse. And if you’re looking for something a little bit more risque, the company Green Knickers is offering a Valentine’s day special: a bar of chocolate from Divine with every pair of organic cotton, fair trade boxers or briefs you purchase. (I can’t find anything on Divine’s kashrut status, but this was too cute not to include. Thanks to Grist for the hat tip.)
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.
*As if you need another reason to buy sustainable – for every gift purchased through The Jew & The Carrot’s sustainable gift guide, Amazon will make a donation to the blog!
Shop for Chanukah today with the Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide.
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?
The Frozzen (yes two zs) Haute Chocolate, a $25,000 desert from Serendipity 3 in New York City. Here’s my question, why would you want to EAT gold? Yes, yes, there’s the whole “you are what you eat,” thing, but would you really want to be an inert mineral that probably causes serious indigestion?
Let’s just say The Frozzen Haute Chocolate doesn’t top my Chanukah gift wish list this year – but if you want to get me something from The Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide…
The Jew & The Carrot presents a sustainable Chanukah gift guide, which features earth-friendly, meaningful present ideas for (just about) everyone in your life.
- A vegan cookbook for your sister?
- A sturdy bike basket for your cycling buddy?
- A kosher, organic tea set for your boss?
Find these great gift ideas (and many more) at The Jew & The Carrot’s Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide
Walking down the streets of Brooklyn, you will inevitably run into some cobwebs – not the kind actually made by spiders (that’s asking a little much for our concrete jungle). Instead, you’ll find manufactured, cotton candy-like cobwebs that people drape on their bushes and pile on their stoops (along with winking pumpkins and smirking cardboard witches) for Halloween. Before too long, those pumpkins will be replaced by plastic Santas and reindeer dotted with little, white lights.
What does all this have to do with The Jew & The Carrot? It means the holidays (the “high” version) are over and the holiday (Chanukah) is not that far away. Don’t stress – Chanukah isn’t about gifts anyway - it’s about the lights and miracles and delicious fried foods. But, if you’re looking for 1. a great gift 2. that will benefit a great cause 3. and help you stay on track with all the Jewish holidays, look no further.
The Jewish Farm School has created an absolutely gorgeous 5768-5769 Jewish Farms Calendar that pairs food and farm photography with a 16-month (Sept 07-Dec 08) calendar.
The Jewish Farms Calendar features:
• All Jewish holidays
• Intimate photographs of freshly harvested produce and livestock that Jewish hands helped to cultivate (see attached preview)
• Dates for special Jewish food events (e.g. The Hazon Food Conference)
• Jewish/agricultural quotations
• 100% post-consumer recycled paper
How to purchase the calendar
The calendar is $18 dollars ($14 if you purchase 10 or more) and proceeds benefit the educational programs of the Jewish Farm School and Hazon. Each purchased calendar makes a huge difference! To purchase a calendar, email Robert Friedman or visit The Jewish Farm School’s website.
Check out these great excerpts from a photo essay entitled, What the World Eats, from the book, Hungry Planet, by photographer (and fellow tribesman?) Peter Menzel.
And if you’re ever confused about what blessing to say when encountering a new food, you can use this new handy gadget, from The Jewish Learning Group!
