After eight days of Hannukah holiday feasting, I felt like something was needed to cut all that oil in the system. The edible wild greens that are now in season seemed just the ticket.
Edible wild plants have been an essential part of the local diet here in the Galilee going back to the stone age hunters and gatherers. I have learned from neighbors in the nearby Bedouin villages which plants are good to eat, where to find them, and how to prepare them. One of the staples, which is considered a seasonal delicacy, is wild chicory – known in Arabic as elet, and in Hebrew as olesh. It can be found around the edges of fields – a low-growing starburst of scalloped leaves. And it is considered to be extremely healthy – good for “cleaning the blood”, as my Bedouin friends have explained.
Going out and gathering is not as commonly practiced in the traditional Arab cultures of the Galilee as it once was – yet the taste for elet remains. Now enterprising farmers have started to cultivate elet and other edible wild plants, and sell them in the local Arab green grocers.
A group of Jewish food lovers, a spread of delectable dishes, and milkshakes made of laughter. If it were possible for one afternoon to be too good, this is where it would start.
A group of Jew & the Carrot writers, editors, and friends faced the risk—overflowing goodness and all—this past Sunday. Of course, it all started with the food. I arrived at host Avigail’s Clinton Hill, Brooklyn apartment to find hand-layered ratatouille swirling from the center of a clay baking dish, crusty homemade beer bread, a cake topped with the purple velvet of baked plums, aromatic rosemary bread, peach-basil salad, and made-from-scratch yogurt. That alone nearly tipped the scales to the side of the too good. Did I mention that we washed this down with homemade sparkling ginger-grapefruit juice? Spiked with gin?
What if you knew that the organic vanilla that you were using in your recipe was not only kosher, but was grown by farmers who would not, under any circumstances, work in their gardens, harvest their trees or deliver their crop from 18 minutes before sundown on Friday until tzeit hakochavim (the appearance of three stars in the sky) on Saturday—with the same applying to all Jewish Festivals.
What if you knew that these farmers live in the deepest regions of sub-Saharan East Africa in the area Mbale, Uganda, and that their farming cooperative consisted of Jewish, Muslim and Christian members called Peace Kawomera?
What if you knew that these farmers were being paid two and a half times the fair trade price for their beans, because a volunteer organization run by a hazzan (cantor) in Los Angeles removes the middle-man and makes every attempt to allow the farmer to receive the most that he/she can?
What if you knew that this organization, Uniting Jewish Communities and Products, UJCP, is attempting to do this for as many communities as possible throughout the world, helping them become self sufficient, providing clothes, housing, health care and education.
Locavores in Los Angeles should take note of a class, California Native Seasonings and Condiments offered by the Theodore Payne Foundation from 2 to 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 29.
Taught by Connie Vadheim, an adjunct professor of biology at California State University at Dominguez Hills, the class will be a discussion of native plants that can be used to flavor and enhance your food. Recipes will be provided.
The class costs $20 for foundation members and $30 for nonmembers. It will be held at the Payne Foundation, 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley, CA 91352. For information, call (818) 768-1802.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Plastic tables at the farmer’s market are straining under their bounty, colors are popping from veggies of every stripe and new garlic is out of the ground, drying on racks and tarps and hanging in braids in barns around the country, the smell of fresh heads mixing with the with last year’s pungent hay.
This week I went to pick up our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA box from the Tikvat Israel synagogue for the first time. The above picture is of my mother eagerly placing each food item into a recyclable bag.
In addition to the weekly newsletter, there is now a Google group for the members of the (Hazon-sponsored) CSA where everyone shares recipes and tips for prepping the different vegetables. It’s really turning into a culinary community!
Last week’s box contained kale, boc choi, rhubarb, romaine lettuce, spinach, scallions and fresh oregano. Once again, the vegetables were so fresh they were all used up in the course of two meals:
Everything comes together at this time of year. We meaningfully commemorate the Exodus, dutifully begin to count the Omer and then the darkness of Yom HaShaoh slaps us in the face. And after that, this year, the next day is Earth Day. Given the state of the economy and the recent warning by the EPA that carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health, my family and I were tired of abstraction. I wanted to look these holidays in the eye, here and now. This is the story of how a Pesach in the desert inspired us to plant an indoor organic vegetable garden in our NYC apartment.
The other evening, I committed a crime: I watered my asparagus patch. Emboldened by my misdeed, the next morning I watered my lettuce, onions, tomatoes, and even some inedible potted plants.
No one’s coming to arrest me, or even to slap a fine on me. In truth, it’s not exactly clear if the new Israeli law prohibiting watering applies to all gardens, to public gardens or just to lawns. It’s also not clear who will be enforcing it: The “green patrol” is famously understaffed. You can be sure that bigger criminals than me will be watering lawns in the middle of the day this summer, and one or two of them may even get a slap on the wrist.
Pesach is the holiday of spring. It’s not only the hard-boiled eggs on the Seder plate that remind us of new beginnings in this season. The parsley, though it’s supposed to be bitter, has always seemed to me to embody the new green sprouting from the earth. Pesach also marks the beginning of the Omer – the countdown to the wheat harvest in late spring/early summer.
Just before Pesach, then, is a great time to visit the open market – the “shuk” – to see what fruits and vegetables are in season, and decide which will be gracing our Pesach table. The shuk nearest kibbutz Gezer is in Ramla. It’s not exactly on the tourist track, but it’s one of the best, and on Wednesdays and Fridays it’s bustling with people from all over and from every walk of life.
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.
Hazon’s Tu Bishvat seder was lots of fun – we sang, we kibbutzed, ate an amazing meal, and listened to some inspiring words by Dr. Eilon Schwartz of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel. *Note our take on sustainable centerpieces – fresh herbs in glass jars surrounded by pecans. It’s low-key, lovely and edible (after the seder you can make parsley pesto and pecan pie!). Who says you need cut flowers?
