Passover is a perfect time to learn about Jewish communities from around the world, since there are so many different customs that surround the seder and Passover observance in general.  Whether it is the Afgan and Iranian custom of smacking your tablemates with scallions during Dayenu or the Hungarian custom of decorating the seder table with jewels to commemorate the gold, silver and precious stones that the Israelites took with them from Egypt, Passover can really give us a glimpse into the practices of Jewish communities other than our own.  Haroset is one of the ways that people can learn about other communities and their seder customs, since it seems that every Jewish community (and perhaps every Jewish family) has their own way of creating this seder plate staple.

At Congregation B’nai Jeshurun Hebrew School in New York City, Ivy Schreiber, the Director of Education, brought the Haroset Taste-Off to the students.  In the weeks before Passover, each class picks one type of haroset to make.  They learn about the country where it originates from and make the haroset.  Finally, all the classes come together and present their harosets to a panel of judges.  The judges determine the best tasting, best looking, the best presentation and the class that displayed the best teamwork.  Not only do the students and teachers have a terrific time making the haroset, but they also get a window into how another Jewish community celebrates Passover.

Consider having a haroset taste off at your seder this year.  Create little bowls of different types of haroset, along with a card that explains a little bit about where it comes from.  Guests at the seder can try a few different kinds and vote on their favorite.  You can find all the recipes here.   Chag Sameach!

“This is the bread of affliction”, my father would drone every Passover as he opened the familiar blue square box. “Matzah is tasteless and dry, not meant to be enjoyed. Eating it should remind you of the sufferings of our people.”  As he went on and on and on with his yearly lecture on the harshness of slavery and unleavened bread I sat there slathering on salted butter, devouring sheet after sheet of crispy goodness. Although bland and stomach binding, this so-called ‘bread of affliction’ was a welcome change to the squishy, faintly chemical smelling Wonder loaves my mother bought the rest of the year. Despite the family mandate that matzah eating required a certain degree of complaining to make it religiously significant, my appreciation for the magical combination of flour, water, and fire was born.

Where I grew up in the Midwest during the 1970’s there were only two kinds of matzah available. Manishewitz and Streit’s. Both perfectly square and almost identical in taste, matzah was matzah; or so I thought. It was not until decades later at a community Seder that I discovered that matzah could be round, organic or made from non-white flour.

 Gourmet Matzah? Forget the family mandate, my quest for the ultimate “bread of affliction’ was ignited. After sampling every brand and flavor of matzah I could find, it hit me. My ancestors did not eat matzah found on supermarket shelves.

They made it.

 By hand.

And you can too.

My matzah recipe.. Affliction never tasted so good. 

Ingredients:

2 cups non-self rising flour

1-cup water (rain water is a nice touch if available)

Kosher salt (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven, with a baking stone or cooking sheet inside, to 475 degrees Fahrenheit.

Turn off your cell phone.

In order to avoid fermentation, thus rendering it un-kosher for Passover, the matzah can take no longer than 18 minutes to make from the time the water is added. In order to meet this time constraint it is good to have a kitchen helper and to make the matzah in individual batches.

Mix water and flour.

 Knead until mixture forms non-sticky dough, adding more flour if necessary.

Roll into thin sheets using either a rolling pin or a pasta machine set to 4.

Cut sheets of rolled dough into rectangles or squares with a pasta cutter or straight edged knife.

Prick the surface of the dough evenly with a fork.

 Salt if desired.

Slide the pricked sheets of dough onto baking stone and bake for four minutes or until matzah is slightly browned.

Remove from oven and cool on a baking rack.

On Passover there are at leat 13 ways of looking at matzah;  Matzah Pizza, matzah lasagne (meat and dairy version), matzah farfel stuffing, matzah brittle, brussell sprouts with garlic matzah crumbs, matzah layer cake, chocolate covered matzah, matzah ball soup, matzah meal chicken nuggets, matzah brei, matzah rolls….. And now,  maple pecan matzah “granola”.  This one is for my kids- who are already tiring of  cream cheese and jam on matzah for breakfast, and vowed to never take a simple bowl of  sweet crunchy morning cereal for granted.

Maple Pecan Matzah Granola

1/4 c. butter

1/2 c. maple syrup

6 c. matzah farfel

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 c. chopped pecans

1/2 c dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper- set aside.  In a saucepan over med. heat melt butter and then mix in maple syrup.  In large bowl combine matzah farfel, cinnamon, and pecans.  Pour in butter-syrup mixture and mix well, until all farfel is coated with syrup.  Spread  “granola” on baking sheet.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring every 8-10 minutes.  Remove from oven when golden and crunchy, toss dried cranberries into the  mix- allow to cool.  Enjoy with milk, on top of yogurt or cottage cheese.

 * If you like your granola sweet, feel free to increase the amount of maple syrup.

from The Ingredients

“Seder” is Hebrew for “order.”  In my playgroup last week we tried to recreate the order in this three-thousand-year-old carefully choreographed ritual (the Passover seder) while exploring the symbolic seder foods.

The children made seder plates. They got large biodegradable bamboo plates, onto which they glued round cardboard prototypes, with six blank circles for the six seder plate foods.  Onto those blanks they stuck stickers representing the egg, lamb shank (we subbed yam), parsley, romaine lettuce, charoset and horseradish.

Veteran choppers they now are, the children cut pink lady and gala apples for the charoset (aka charoseth or haroset) we made (see my mother-in-law’s Baghdadi recipe on my blog). Then each child measured one teaspoon of fine sea salt and poured it into a bowl. They added water, mixed, and had their saltwater bowl for dipping.

And then the seder began.  The children grabbed their pillows so they could recline like kings and queens (princesses maybe?) We did not exactly go by the book (um, Haggadah) but the children did drink four cups of organic grape juice and eat lots of matzah. They sampled all the ingredients on their seder plates, with the egg the runaway favorite.

The children dipped the karpas (parsley) and the egg (and probably just about everything on the table) in the salt water. With Noah Solomon they recited the four questions, named the ten plagues (the pinky-dipping got a bit messy – good thing we had a white paper tablecloth), and made the famous matzah, charoseth and romaine lettuce sandwich.

The big surprise was that no one found the afikomen. And I thought I’d stashed it in such an obvious spot.

Chag sameach!

Every year come Passover there is the great dessert dilemma. Do I try to fake the cake using matzo meal, or forgo carbs and make meringues?  A few years back I put out fruit with a dark chocolate fondue, but you can really pull that rabbit out of the hat just once.  Invariably, I would pause on almonds, which are delicious, protein filled, fragrant, and fraught with biblical meaning.  Many scholars believe that Moses’ rod was an almond branch, as was Aaron’s.  It is also believed by some that the staff of the messiah will be an almond branch.

But until recently, almonds eluded me, having found scant recipe resources and remaining confused about how to prepare them. Enter Elana Amsterdam, her blog (Elana’s Pantry), and her book, the Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook.   Amsterdam follows a year round gluten free diet to help her and her son manage their celiac disease.  She has done extensive research on gluten alternatives and emerges a triumphant advocate of the almond. I reached out to Elana for some more details on her research, choices, and best practices.  She writes, ”I am one of those people that has a lot of fun researching food, products and issues.  While I had always been curious and inquisitive, I truly learned the crafts of research, analysis and writing when I attended Columbia College at Columbia University (I was in the 3rd co-ed class!). I like almond flour because it is tasty, easy to use and super nutritious.  It didn’t take long for me to take a real shine to this product.”

The proof is in the pudding.  And matzo balls.  And vegan pastry cream.  And parve coconut cream frosting (no shortening!). And pancakes. And banana bread.  Amsterdam has come up with amazing, gluten free, generally parve, delicious recipes for year round, but of course are especially useful for Passover. Amsterdam is Jewish, and describes her food philosophy as ‘eco-kosher’.  She admires the work of Arthur Wasko, and tries to maintain an even handed, open approach to food and eating.  ”I think eating is a very personal choice and do not find it to be part of my process to judge how other people eat –it is so very individual.  I do have quite a few different types of people with an affinity for my website –whole food advocates, vegans, etc. My eating choices are shaped by my idea that we are all bio-chemical individuals and there is no “one size fits all” eating plan.  Therefore, I have done a lot of experimentation in terms of eating and my own constitution.  In my 20′s I taught yoga and studied Ayurveda which had a tremendous impact on my views surrounding health and healing.”

When you read her recipes, there are a few common ingredients including almond flour, grape seed oil, agave, baking soda, and dark chocolate.  You will see eggs, but very little dairy.  Occasionally she experiments with coconut flour.  ”All of my cookie recipes are dairy and egg free.  I do this so that more people can partake in the recipes I create –my goal is to make delicious food tasty enough for everyone and for people on restricted eating plans to be able to break bread with family and friends again.  I especially limit the use of dairy in my recipes because many people that are gluten intolerant cannot digest dairy either.”

Elana also advocates for more careful shopping and food choices.  ”I purchase organic produce, wild sea food and organic poultry.  When it comes to poultry, “natural” is really not so great.  ”Natural” livestock is fed pesticide laden food, I do not view this as natural.” All of this comes together in her home kitchen, where she, “make(s) a delicious Shabbos dinner every Friday and we have huge feasts at the Jewish holidays with friends and family.  Recently my son’s Hebrew class came over for Purim and we made Hamantaschen and Shaloch Manos.”  Imagine what this woman can do for her seder, and yours.

Want to win a copy of the Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook?  Leave a comment below about your Passover cooking adventures below. Last date for entries is April 4th.  Winner will be notified by email on April 5th.

Recipe – Double Chocolate Orange Torte

Courtesy of Elana Amsterdam

½ cup dark chocolate 73%
½ cup blanched almond flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ teaspoon celticseasalt.com” href=”http://celticseasalt.directtrack.com/z/14/CD47/&l=1″ target=”_blank”>celtic sea salt
3 eggs
½ cup agave nectar
½ cup grapeseed oil
1 tablespoon orange zest
½ cup dark chocolate 73%

1. Place ½ cup chocolate chips in a food processor and pulse until coarsely ground to the texture of gravel
2. Pulse in almond flour, cacao powder and salt and process until well combined, about 10 seconds
3. Add eggs to food processor and pulse again, then add in agave, grapeseed oil and orange zest
4. Pulse all ingredients together until smooth
5. Remove “bowl” from food processor and stir in second ½ cup of chocolate chips using a spoon or spatula
6. Transfer batter into a well oiled 10 inch springform pan
7. Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean

So you promised your boss you would go to work 1/2 day Monday, but you haven’t finished your shopping for the big night.  It’s Chicago.  It’s winter.  OK technically it’s Spring, but we’re all still wearing parkas and fantasizing about the sun returning.  And most importantly, the farmers’ market season in Chicago doesn’t really being until April.

Or does it?

A little-known gem is thriving right under your L stop in downtown Chicago!  Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand, located at 66 E. Randolph Street, is practically under the Randolph/Wabash stop, across from the Millenium Metra Train station, and open 6 days a week ALL YEAR.

I had to move back to my hometown after living in Santa Monica, CA for 9 years and the first culture shock was the absence of farmers’ markets from November-April.  In my sluething, I was directed here.  However “here” was embarrassingly difficult to find.  Meaning- when I finally found it, I gave myself the requisite thump on the head because it’s not terribly hidden – but I’ve since learned I’m not the only one who spent many weeks driving/walking past it without noticing it.  It’s part of a larger structure of community galleries, meeting rooms, etc.  So stick to your guns and remember “66 E. Randolph” and you’ll notice the lovely neon sign calling you into the little magical wonderland inside…

The mission here is to carry produce, meat, and baked goods grown, raised, baked within 250 miles of Chicago.  And it works.  I can get a full week’s worth of groceries here due to the variety offered.  And being vegetarian, I’m excluding some of the vendors.

So- what’s good for Passover?  Each week I get BEAUTIFUL greens for salads from Living Water Farms.  Add on onions, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes – the expansive vendor list can be seen online here: CDF Vendor List

Need vanilla?  How about some coffee extract? Rose Water?  You can find a solid variety of vanillas, sugars, extracts from the incomparable Waukegan-based, Kosher, Nielsen-Massey Vanillas.  They even have stacks of recipes at their display in case you are looking for an excuse to buy that Rose Water but have no clue what to do with it (like me).

More kosher yummy can be found in the front refrigerated section – top shelf – Futters Nut Butters. I can’t stop raving about their amazing chocolate nut butters – wow.

Some of my favorite items at this farmstand come from Nicole’s Divine Crackers.  Not kosher, but healthy, unleavened, organic and – wow – I just met her last week (more on that later) – this woman and her business partner “Little Grace” have a lot of chutzpah starting a new bakery/career when they were in their late 50′s (Nikki is now approaching 85).  Get some of Nicole’s “In Your Wildest Dreams” crackers (cranberry & pepper!) to munch on before sundown and then come back next week for more!

So – stop by this hidden year-round farmer’s market during your lunch break or on your way home Monday.  I’m sure you’ll find goodies to add local, organic love to your seder.  And if you need any help, the staff there is friendly, knowledgeable, and passionate about their farmers, their produce, and you.

…during the winter

…on a day other than Saturday

Those of us organic, sustainable foodies in Chicago are keenly aware of the famous Green City Market which stays open year-round by moving into the Nature Museum November-April.  But for us who observe Shabbat, the Saturday-only schedule they keep in the in winter months is sad news indeed.

So I finally kvetched – kvweeted? – to all the Chicago farmers market Tweeps I follow about how Jews are blocked from farmers market goodness in the winter.

The good people at The Local Beet promptly directed me to 2 markets, The Downtown Chicago Farmstand (open daily) and The Logan Square Farmers Market (Sundays 10am-1pm).  So I ran- ok I took 2 buses- to Logan Square last Sunday.  Tucked away in the Congress theatre at 2135 N. Milwaukee Avenue (just north of Armitage), here is what I found-

First I found none of the baked goods nor meats were kosher – so this won’t be your stop for Passover matzah, lamb, cheese, or macaroons if you adhere to rules of kashrut.  But the produce is fresh, organic, and local.  The baked goods are created using local ingredients.  Everything is grown, stirred, canned, and baked with love. So here we go…

First stop? Logan Square resident, Sarah Marino, from Oak Park’s Reform synagogue, B’nai Abraham Zion.  She stood behind a table directing shoppers where they could find each item for their seder.  Brilliant!

Next? Mushrooms! wow- beautiful, healthy, gorgeous mushrooms compliments of River Valley Ranch.

Across the way, the incomparable Paula Jeremias of Tiny Greens is juicing wheat grass and clipping fresh sprouts- sunflower, broccoli, arugula (yum!), onion, alfalfa… any of these turn a bowl of mixed greens into a gourmet entree.  Not to mention sprucing up that seder plate – something other than parsley would be a nice change, no?

Moving on…past the artisan cheeses, french baguettes, herbal teas, macaroons (more on these later)… Apples! Baskets and baskets and baskets of beautiful, apples from Hillside Orchards in Michigan.

Next stop? Free Range eggs from chickens fed organic greens while living at Tempel Farms.

Across the way, is the lovely Anne Kostroski of Crumb with her homemade matzah made with eggs and honey from this market!  Sadly it is not kosher for Pesach – she explained to me this is something she’s made for her family seders for years, and finally this year she decided to bring it to the market.  It’s the BEST matzah you’ll ever eat, I promise. 1/2 dozen pieces are $4, Dozen is $8.  If you’d like to learn more about Anne and her matzah, check out Brad Moldofsky’s article This is NOT your Mother’s Bread of Affliction.

Next to Anne is the Elgin-based, Dennanne Farms.  They have the most extraordinary soaps- seriously, get your clean on at with Denny & Anne Bukala while grabbing yummy honey to make your own homemade matzah.

After the sweet, is the savory of Herbally Yours.  I picked up a bottle of their Rosemary Garlic vinegar and have enjoyed the best salads all week.  Their Basil Oregano Vinegar is ridiculous (and award-winning).  And, of course, these herbs and more can be purchased from them sans vinegar.  Just ask.  He LOVES his product and the herbs and will insist you taste everything he’s got.  And it’s all amazing.

So that’s all that’s safe for Passover – not counting the matzah – but I wonder if the love and care put into this matzah could possibly be considered worthy of kosher status – just minus the official man officially supervising the love and care…so I had to mention it.

One more worth mentioning, but not kosher for Pesach, Macaron Chicago – Beth Jacob handcrafts these little lovelies and ohhhhh that Mayan Chocolate one is out of this world delight.  When shopping Sunday morning, stop by, grab a box or two (or 5), to munch on while cleaning and prepping Sunday night and Monday afternoon.  You will be so happy you did!

So this was late posting- sometime technology gets the better of me (like spilling soda on my dear little mac – thank goodness for the computer fix-it saints in that basement shop around the corner from me).  Hopefully you’re reading this as you sip your morning coffee Sunday thinking “gosh I wish I could go to a farmers market this morning instead of Whole Foods”.  Go! Enjoy!

One day last spring, at 11 minutes to midnight, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. My jeans were streaked with dirt and my hands covered with those chalky, yellow rubber gloves that scream, “I’m in serious cleaning mode, people!” There was something soothing about the rhythm of plunging my sponge into the bucket of sudsy water and attacking the grimy tile. And heaven knows, I needed some soothing; I was waist-deep into preparing my kitchen for Passover for the first time, and I was terrified.

As a home cook who had done my share of scrubbing beet juice from the grooves of cutting boards, and coaxed stubborn islands of cheese from the bottom of lasagna pans, I admittedly should not have been so intimidated by a little cleaning. But getting ready for Passover felt like serious business. On top of the usual kitchen cleaning, every last crumb of bread, which is forbidden during the weeklong holiday, needed to be accounted for. If a rebellious Kashi flake fell through the cracks, my home would be unfit for the celebration. To crib from the Hebrew National hotdog packages, Passover cleaners “answer to a higher authority.”

Growing up in Chicago, my mother was always in charge of our family’s Passover preparations. Weeks before the first seder, a look of determination would set on her brow. Beginning with the cupboards she would start to purge: removing packages of crackers and cereal and packing them away in cardboard boxes. Next came the refrigerator, which lost all trace of its bagels and hamburger buns. Wet cloth in hand, she then set to wiping down the fridge with the same sure, proud movements that a neighborhood father used when waxing the family car in his driveway.

As the big night drew near, my mom would return from her annual pilgrimage to Hungarian, the kosher supermarket that’s an hour’s drive from our house. As soon as the bags were unpacked, the kitchen sorcery began. She wielded her stainless steel knife like a wand to perform strange feats of culinary alchemy. Piles of bald, pink chickens morphed into fragrant pots of soup. McIntosh apples slipped easily out of their peels before being chopped and stirred with cinnamon and toasted walnuts, while entire cartons of eggs were boiled and set to brine in saltwater baths. And no matter how full the fridge became, she always managed to wedge in another bowl in her own private game of kitchen Tetris.

Twenty-four hours before guests arrived, she and my dad would stand at opposite ends of the dining room, coaxing our creaky antique table open wide enough to add in the extra leaves. Then, with a sort of pregame grace, my mom would float a white tablecloth over the mammoth surface, pausing to straighten a wayward corner.

My only job was to polish the silverware, which spent the other 51 weeks of its life in a velvet-lined box under my parents’ bed. I loved working a rag around the bend of a spoon or between the tines of a fork, unearthing tastes from years past as I made my way through the pile: the tickle of horseradish in my nose, the boxes of sugar-dusted jelly candies shaped like orange slices, or a bottle of Manischewitz wine swiped from the adult table, sweet and syrupy on our lips.

I was always baffled by my mother’s dedication to her yearly rituals. The rest of the year she made grilled shrimp, pork chops and any number of nonkosher delicacies pulled from the pages of her favorite magazines. But for those eight days, our house was a holy temple and she its spiritual leader. Part of her devotion likely stemmed from an inherent love of spring cleaning. But she claimed it was all in memory of her grandmother, Lillian, who had moved with her husband to Brooklyn from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century, eventually settling further west in the wilds of Minnesota. “Bubbe,” my mother used to say, “liked to read the newspaper, even though she could barely speak English.” In my child’s imagination, I envisioned a sweet-smelling, crinkly-eyed woman — my great-grandmother — wetting her thumb and nodding as she turned the page. Great-grandma Lillian, my mother told me, kept a kosher home all her life. I think cleaning for Passover was my mom’s way of quietly welcoming the memories of her lost family members back to the table.

Now it was my turn. In years past, while sharing a tiny Brooklyn kitchen with three roommates, I had put off cleaning and survived the week on sandwiches of matzo, cream cheese and banana, eaten off of paper towels. But now that I was a newlywed celebrating my first major Jewish holiday with my husband, the kitchen had taken on a new significance, holding within its walls the weight of family and an unspoken promise to keep alive an ancient tradition.

Part of me felt burdened by the responsibility and wished I could awaken to discover everything already gleaming and ready to go. Instead, I dug out the forgotten ends of baguettes from the freezer, brushed crumbs from the cabinet corners and poured kettles of boiling water over the counters. I stocked up on cheese and waxy potatoes — a blessed bit of substance during the mostly starch-free holiday — and baked trays of coconut macaroons to make our cleared-out pantry feel less bare. My husband vacuumed the living room rugs and brought home new pots and pans that we would designate for Passover use. More than once, I called my mom in a near panic over one detail or another. I sighed a lot, and hoped that we were doing everything right.

And then, somehow, the day before Passover arrived. With a rush of exhaustion, I stood in the kitchen doorway and let my weight sink into the frame. In front of me, sunlight spilled across the counters. Inside the cupboards, unopened boxes of matzo patiently awaited their debut. Standing there, I realized that life presents us with many moments when the things we took for granted as kids become ours to care for. And to my surprise, I realized that by saying goodbye to the freedoms of youth, we sometimes gain something even better: a connectedness to family, a connectedness to heritage.

*Photo by JaymieK via Flickr

For many American Jews, the Passover seder is an intimate and annual Jewish experience that is possibly the only time of year they will have such an experience. Not just Jews, but even many non-Jews in America enjoy participating in a Passover seder. There is something unique about the Passover seder which forces us to contemplate our role and status in society, our historical memory and our diet. Whether one observes the laws of dietary restrictions for the full 7 or 8 days of the festival, or if one simply partakes in the unique cuisine, one cannot help but reflect on our typical diets in the face of the temporary changes.

In our contemporary society we have the freedom to visit supermarkets and specialized stores and purchase food from around the world irrelevant of the season or distance. And yet, at the Passover seder, we are forced to recall what it means to hastily prepare simple loaves transported on back. We recognize, in a certain regard, between the stark difference of experiencing food in servitude and experiencing food in freedom. And while we have the freedom to buy and eat what we want, for a series of reasons we in the 21st century have less freedom and awareness in choosing or understanding how our food is produced and what type of story our food has from farm to table.

Not only does the ritual and cuisine of the Passover seder offer reflection on the abundance of our food in freedom and the strictures on the availability of food in servitude, but we also address, explicitly and directly, the reality of perpetual hunger in our midst. In the era of our Biblical ancestors, out Rabbinic forbears and even into the shtetlakh of our great-grandparents, the reason for perpetual hunger was a lack of resources. In some places there was just not enough good and in traditional, localized communities, from the Rabbinic era (at the earliest) through the dawn of modernity, self-corrective, sustainable community support systems were established to support those who lack essential needs—the kuppah and tamhui, the communal fund and the communal food bank. Today, when most of us live in decentralized, urban or suburban settings where we do not maintain localized economies with self-corrective mechanisms, perpetual hunger in our midst is caused by a wholly different set of issues. Rather than a lack of food—quite to the contrary, we have an incredible abundance of food in the United States, enough in fact to feed other full nations—our set of factors actually make it so that we do have the ability to truly end hunger in our nation.

At the Passover seder we will all read “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” As a good friend of mine once wrote, in our contemporary context it is more likely to have Elijah the Prophet stroll through the door than a local homeless person or poor person. The Passover traditions highlight, in a very real way, the connections between our economy, our food production systems and the hunger we see and know is a problem. As I said above, while we have the freedom to buy what we want, we often lack the knowledge of what is in our food. That is not to say we do not know the list of ingredients, but rather the process by which that food was grown or the product was refined and produced. We do not necessarily know whether or not food products include genetically modified organisms, or if the livestock we consume was fed on GMOs, or if it was raised in a healthy, respectful and ethical manner. We do not know or have a say in the farming practices utilized or how the workers were treated in the production or packaging plants. While we lack the transparency to have full disclosure of these unknowns and more, we do have the choice of what production systems we support. In an age of misleading labels and confusing and competing health claims it becomes very challenging for a busy consumer to know what to do.

For myself, the solution to this multi-faceted and pervasive issue is relatively simple. I believe we can learn an incredible amount from our ancestors’ localized systems of food and communal support. A critical mass of food consciousness is rising and despite this a slew of options become more and more confusing. And yet, a simple solution persists and has been with us from time immemorial. If we want to know what is in our food and the story of food from farm to table, we have the ability and even moral responsibility to construct a reality where we have access to that knowledge. This reality of transparency in food production is not in a far-off fantasy utopia—it is upon us, and as I said, has always been there. When I go to a supermarket, and I am in the produce section, I know that an ear of corn is an ear of corn. If I’m in the freezer section or canned food aisle, I know if there is corn in the bag or can. But I have no knowledge of who grew the corn, where the seeds came from or how it was grown. I likely have no idea where it was grown, and if it’s canned or frozen, when it was grown. While the family farm is not what it once was in the United States, they are far from extinct. By visiting farmer’s markets or joining a CSA, we create the very real possibility of establishing an intimate and meaningful connection to our food production which creates a greater transparency and awareness of the environmental and health impact of our food production. What’s more, I can know what chemicals, if any, were used, even the name of the farmhand. You can develop trust with local farmers which we do not have access to in a typical setting in the 21st century in the United States. For many of us, the ease of going to the supermarket to buy produce and packaged food is taken for granted. But in our urban centers we see growing obesity, diabetes and other health problems in poor communities in higher numbers than other segments in our society. This is easily attributed to what is known as ‘Food Deserts,’ neighborhoods without easy, local access to stores with fresh, whole foods. Rather, in these places, people either have the travel distances of 30 miles in places like rural Mississippi, or rely on fast food, $1 stores, gas stations and convenient stores, or if lucky, discount groceries with produce rejected by major supermarkets in places like LA or NY. Urban gardening is an incredibly successful way to achieve many positive and just changes in these communities. Aside from providing locally produced, whole foods, it also builds community, encourages ownership, stewardship and a connection to one another. It also teaches children important skills and lessons and provides healthy alternatives to cheap, sugar and fatty processed foods. Even more, it has the potential to bride communities traditionally separated by economic gaps, and provides opportunity for more affluent segments of society to support communities in poverty by establishing CSAs around urban gardeners in poor communities which provide income. As demand for locally grown produce increases, based on the natural laws of a capitalist economic system, so too should the supply. And as the supply and demand grow so will the resources and infrastructure necessary to maintain a localized system of food production.

If we move our food systems to localized production we also establish ourselves in better standing to see to societal corrections for where hunger persists. Rather than rely on donation to food banks and soup kitchens, we can rely, as our ancestors did, on local support systems rather than over-sized bureaucracies like food stamp programs or welfare. Not to diminish from the very real success of those programs (food stamps perhaps more so than welfare), I would not want to see their dissolution, but rather to utilize these larger programs in conjunction with the localization of our food systems. Ideally, in such a society, federal agencies would cease to subsidize corn, soy and cotton, but rather based off of wider consumer demand such agencies should reasonably subsidize food production for local, family farms which grow food for human consumption. Localized food production also encourages local economic competition rather than massive conglomerates which monopolize seed production and food distribution.

As we clean our homes and souls of hametz these next few days, let us also reflect on the figurative hametz, or unnecessary and unhelpful aspects, of our food systems and of our own personal consumer choices. What might it look like to do one’s best to source the produce for their seder from a local farmer, where possible? How might our reflections on our physical freedom change in the face of both our freedom of choice and our restriction of knowledge and awareness? When we open our doors and invite the hungry this year, let us reflect on how our own consumer choices could have an effect, positive or negative, on the lives of others. I encourage all of us this Passover season to spend the time asking ourselves these difficult questions and encourage us also to look towards the other side of these narrow straits towards the promise of a better and healthier society, in body and environment, for future generations.

This year we are servants in the straits of hunger, poverty and environmental destruction, next year may we celebrate the freedom of having a control and a share in our food production. This year in food deserts, next year in food justice.