Welcome back to the land of bread! I had a realization on Sunday night, around 6:30 (i.e. T-minus 2 hours to carb consumption, when I was locked in a state of restless self-pity) that Passover would be a perfect time to try a cleanse. After the original spirit and kavannah (intention) of the seder wore off, you could at least still congratulate yourself for detoxing. Perhaps - but I digress.

Two days after Passover, however, is definitely a great time to wipe off the final matzah crumbs and get your finger back on the pulse of what else that’s going on in the world of food. Check out these tasty ideas from around the blogosphere. B’tai Avon!

Sacred Foods. Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal published a compendium of resources to help Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders educate about sustainable food and eating and make responsible food purchasing decisions in their congregations. The resource guide was created as part of Aleph’s Sacred Foods project. Find them here.

Carbon Side Dish. The New York Times reported this weekend on the strange-but-true phenomenon that it is not only possible but actually cost-effective to catch a fish in Norway, ship it to China to be processed into filets, and then shipped back to Norway for sale. oof - somehow, I’m not feeling all that hungry. Read it here.

Still Veggie After All These Years. Lilith Magazine talked with vegetarian guru, Mollie Katzen about the 30th anniversary of The New Moosewood Cookbook. (Unfortunately, the full story isn’t online, but you can purchase a copy the mag here.)

Drink Your (Raw) Milk. Harpers jumped on the raw milk bandwagon with a fabulous article on unpasturized dairy, its naysayers, and the converts who claim straight from the udder is the only way to go. Check it out here.

Sticker Shock. Grist offers a clear, concise analysis of the complicated issue of rising food costs. Read about it here.

(Cross posted from All Voices.)

Napa Valley has a problem - their grapes are drunk.

Grapes - the region’s cash crop and tourist draw - grow best under a warm summer sun that is tempered by a kiss of cool air at night. When the weather gets too hot for too long, however, the grapes can “cook” on the vine, resulting in an alcohol content more fitting to a firey grappa than the mellow cabernets the region is known for.

Unfortunately, rising temperatures seem to be the norm in Napa these days where, according to the NY Times Magazine: “most Napa winemakers agree that 10-year averages are the hottest in memory.” As a result, Napa grape farmers are being forced to rethink every growing technique they thought they knew to save their crops. The NY Times Magazine reports: Read more »

x-posted from All Voices.

Scene from inside a fancy restaurant circa 2015:

Man: (scanning the menu) - What are you thinking of getting dear?
Woman: Hmmm…pasta looks good, but I think I’d actually prefer a steak.
Man: Do you know where the meat comes from?
Woman: Of course! I always inquire about the source of the meat I eat. It’s from vat 13 at Acme Labs!

This scene may sound like fodder for a science fiction novel, but according to Wired, test tube meat may end up on consumers’ plates in the not-too-distant future.

Grown in bioreactors, the in vitro meat would be created to mimic the texture and flavor or real meat, from to ground chuck to filet mignon. As of now, scientists say that they have a ways to go before reaching the desired results - but they’re making progress. Wired reported: “Researchers can currently grow small amounts of meat in the lab, and have even been able to get heart cells to beat in Petri dishes. Growing muscle cells on an industrial scale is the next step.”

Read more »

Thanks to Linda for Sunday’s post on the recent NYTimes article about the global context of rising food prices. While raising a number of important issues often overlooked in the domestic “locavore etc.” movement, the article begins to explain the effect of biofuels on global food prices. In December, Grassroots International, Community Food Security Coalition, World Hunger Year and several other groups released the report “Fueling Disaster: A Community Food Security Perspective on Agrofuels,” which deals with the effects of proliferating reliance on biofuels on food sovereignty.

Read more »

Seldom have I found an article as compelling as the January, 19th NY Times article The Food Chain - A New Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories.

Many of us are very conscious of what we eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced. We do what we can in our communities by supporting CSAs, local farmers markets, buying not toxic household cleaning products etc. While we are aware on some level of why these choices are important, I find that it is often hard to see the big picture. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around the extent to which there is a global food crisis emerging all around us. Because we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, in many ways this reality has not yet hit home.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this article.

The New York Post reported yesterday that Coca-Cola added five new hybrid-electric trucks to it’s 90-vehicle delivery fleet at it’s distribution center in the South Bronx.  NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg was reported as saying:

“What the company does is known to people around the world. The same can be said for New York City. That’s why it’s so important we take the lead on big issues like air pollution and global warming.”

According to the Post, Coke’s new trucks cost about 40 percent more than conventional diesel trucks and use 32 percent less fuel and are powered entirely by electricity, which produces zero emissions, when traveling at speeds below 30 mph.

As an occasional - and semi-closeted - Coke drinker (I only drink sometimes and only at restaurants with ice and a straw), I’m both excited and wary about Coke’s green leanings.  It’s definitely a step in the right direction for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s also a very small step.  Whole Foods offsets 100% of its energy use with wind power - couldn’t Coke (which owns, like, half the world) do a little better than 5 trucks? 

Way back in April, I attended and sang in Northampton, MA, at one of the many ‘Step it Up’ rallies going on across the country, and across the world, to bring attention to the realities of climate change. The sound system was powered by veggie oil from my van’s engine running through an inverter, and a good time was had by all. You can see my van, the ‘Veggie Voyager’, near the top right of the photo. Ironically, the weather was perfect! Here is a broadcast from WAMC radio that sums up the event pretty nicely.

Click here to listen!
This past weekend, another series of Step it Up rallies were called across the country - hundreds in all. I played at the rally in Kingston, NY, organized by the teachers and students of Kingston High School. This time though, the weather was cold and wet - making it harder to think about global warming! Activists of all stripes were there, and the mood was festive. Congressman Maurice Hinchey came to support the event, and he spoke after the music. Check out ‘Step it Up’ to see how you might get involved next time!

Last month, I had a great time at the Alternative Energy Festival run by the Beacon Sloop Club, an affiliate of the Clearwater organization. The club has done wonders in rehabilitating the waterfront area, and bringing environmental education and progressive culture to the city.

Pete Seeger himself has been a hard-working member of the club from the beginning, and his commitment to the Hudson river has been remarkable and unwavering over many years, and it is always a delight to see him there. I came to sing, and to demonstrate the ‘Veggie Voyager’, my vegetable oil-powered van.

After my concert, I wandered around the well organized, dockside Beacon Farmer’s Market (with lots of sustainably grown food) that runs there every Sunday.

There I met Seth Aaron, a student from the Newburgh Free Academy, and part of the winning team in the 12th annual Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge, a national competition. They drove from Texas to NY in July, and tied for first place with a team from Missouri. That qualifies them to go on to the world championship in Australia. The car itself, dubbed the ‘Sol Machine’, is actually made of Kevlar, a welded titanium frame and solar panels that charge the battery. It can go up to 50 mph. The car’s parts total more than $50,000.

In my next post, I’ll be talking with Seth about his culinary experience on the trip.

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 personally ready to put a cap on my own bottled water consumption - give me a Britta and a good looking Nalgene and I’ll get along just fine.  I’m not, however, ready to let go of seltzer water - that “traditional Jewish” bubbly beverage that just feels a little more exciting than its non-carbonated cousin.  Luckily, I just found out about a company called Fountain Jet that offers a “Home Soda Maker” - that promises as little or as much seltzer as you want “with the push of a button.”  I know I sound like an informercial, but I’m pretty excited to think that I could make all my own seltzer for the Rosh Hashanah table and not have a pile of plastic messing up the kitchen afterwards. 

Check out Fountain Jet here.

Dan Barber - my own personal food hero, and one of the featured presenters at Hazon’s 2007 Food Conference - was recently interviewed over at Salon.com.   The topic: agriculture, oil, and the 2007 Farm Bill.  Barber said:

In this country alone, food - from growing to processing, transportation and fertilizer — accounts for about 17 percent of all oil we use, a little less than automobiles. Not only is there an ecological cost to transporting food, because of fossil fuels, but there is a huge ecological impact from the way we grow our food - whether it travels 10 feet or 10,000 miles.  

And…

The typical American cow is just an oil barrel. It’s [fed] corn. And that corn is fed fertilizer and pesticides, meaning oil. It is trucked from a cornfield in Iowa to a feedlot in Colorado, or wherever, again oil. And then that hamburger meat is processed … in oil. And then that hamburger meat is shipped to all the fast-food restaurants — more oil. [The process is] a gas guzzler.

Read more »

Two long months with hardly any rain. That is the dire situation we have been facing this season. Our CSA provides shares to 85 families in the Washington, DC area.  Long ago this past April, we missed a month’s worth of rain, kicking off a season of high and dry windy weather. This has been tough on everything and everyone around.  During this season’s severe extended drought we’ve been dealing with a 2-pronged “war”. On one hand, we must keep every new seedling and translant happy and moist, on the other, we must keep the deer at bay.

The deer come out around mid-August every year as their food runs out in the forest. This season, they were here in July. Entire plantings of green beans, sweet potatoes and edemame, were gone. Badly eaten were the new and still tender tomato and cucumber plants.

Earlier in the season we cought 6 groundhogs over the course of a month and a half, and safely transported them to a wooded area a few miles away. Now we have an early deer problem, and a drought like we’ve never seen before.

Read more »

Yesterday, in the New York Times, was an op-ed by journalist and author James McWilliams, about the true impact of the local food movement on the global environment. In the article, McWilliams, himself an enthusiastic member of a CSA, reports that,

“Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.”

These studies, McWilliams writes, actually prove that once factors other than “food miles” are entered into the equation (such as a farm’s water, energy and fertilizer/pesticide use; packaging, etc) the total carbon footprint of food purchased from half way across the world is often actually lower than that purchased from locally-grown sources. Quoting a noted New Zealand environental researcher, McWilliams notes that locally grown food, “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” McWilliams goes on to urge fellow local-food supporters to view these findings not as a threat, but as a challenge to look at the food system in a new way, as both environmentalists and pragmatists.

There is certainly a large challenge present in this article. For one, it could generate unfavorable press for the local food movement when certain elements of McWilliams’ presentation are taken out of context, or are manipulated for political purposes. For some of us, this information might force us to reconsider whether the other values of local foods (taste, freshness, supporting local farmers, community development, worker’s rights, to name but a few) would still compel us to choose the low-spray apples we buy from the local farm, or, as John Mackey of Whole Foods would claim, we’d be better off buying certified organic ones from across the country.

It’s a discussion worth beginning, even if our answers lead to more questions.

FYI, here is McWilliams’ original article from the Texas Observer, on which the NYT piece was based.

And here are some other perspectives on this issue.

Tomorrow my boyfriend and I head off into the wild yonder known as the West Coast (San Francisco through Shabbat and then a jaunt north to Portland).  While I love any vacation, I’m especially excited about this one.  It’s our first long trip together.  We’re visiting some of my dearest friends.  He’s never been to Portland, before so I get the chance to show him one of my favotie places, after many occasions down in his native Silver Spring.  And it’s California and Portland! - the first a land where heirloom tomatoes grow locally in March, and the latter a pine scented town where everyone carries their reusable coffee mugs strapped to their backpacks. 

I’m also excited because - forgive me for outting myself as a total dork here - I love packing food for the airplane.  If all meals were as delicious as the crustless panini, tiramasu, and bottle of wine I once received (in coach) on a flight between Spain and Italy, there would be no reason to pack food for the plane.  For that reason, I’m actually glad American airline services tend to serve tasteless, plastic-wrapped food. 

Read more »

New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposes the congestion tax.

“Like with the smoking ban,” he said, “we did it, and whole countries followed us.”

We heart him.