Lovers of local honey and urban beekeepers rejoice!  This morning the New York City Board of Health lifted the ban on beekeeping in the City!  Lots of good folks like Just Food and the New York City Beekeepers Association have been putting a lot of great effort into making this happen!

Avi Rubel is the North American Director of Masa Israel Journey, the umbrella organization for immersion programs in Israel for young adults (18-30). When not sending people to Israel, Avi can be found making cheese, bread, kombucha or fermenting or pickling all kinds of goodies in his Brooklyn apartment and recording his adventures on his food blog, Make Cheese Not War. In the weeks after the Hazon Food Conference, he shared some of his thoughts about his experience with Hazon in California.

Click below to read his posts:

• Preserved Lemons from Joan Nathan
• The Food Conference

Do you love your CSA (or Tuv Ha’Haretz) but also want sustainable products that are not found locally where you live?  Things like olive oil and dates are local to the Mediterranean Sea – not New England.  But for folks in the greater New York area committed to sustainable agriculture, some of our CSAs have recently partnered with a new company that supports small-scale farming and economic development in the Negev Region of Israel.

Negev Nectars, a new business that launched last week, will be bringing gourmet, sustainably produced foods to CSAs (and Tuv Ha’Haretz) to the United States.  Negev Nectars members will be sent olive oil, jams, chutneys, honey, dried herbs and other unique products (check them out here) three times a year just before Hanukkah, Passover and Rosh Hashanah.  Negev Nectars can be shipped all over the U.S., although your share can be picked up at participating sites.  Currently Negev Nectars can be picked up at the Tuv Ha’Haretz in White Plains, NY and Forest Hills, NY with additional sites coming soon in New York and New Jersey.

The Delicious Pie, Sans First Slice

On Sunday night as my mother and I stood outside and began the slow, sad process of dismantling our Sukkah, I started to think about autumn and more specifically, why it ranks as my favorite time of the year. The end of the fall holidays always hit me hard, perhaps even harder than the thought of returning to my daily routine. And yet there I was, shivering in my pajamas and thanking Hashem Almighty that it was fall in New York.

Considering my deep loathing of the snow and my firm belief that the winter should be spent hibernating (with only rare breaks for hot chocolate and cookies), I’m always surprised by my love of its seasonal predecessor. But then I remember that the fall is the start of a brand new year for us Jews. Everything is open before us, and we haven’t had much chance to mess up yet. My favorite flavors come into the Farmers’ Markets: apples, butternut squash, fresh figs, and best of all, pumpkins. And for me, the fall comes with a wonderful combination of those two notions.

Since the next day was Columbus Day (or as I like to call it, the most arbitrary day off of the year), my mother, two of my

Date Honey from the Galilee

Here in the Galilee, a modest but auspicious ease in the heat is rousing us out of our summer torpor.  That and the impending preparations for Rosh Hashana – with the questions that are on everyone’s lips: who is eating where and preparing what?

Our holiday table, like most, will be graced with a plate of sliced apples, and a bowl of honey to dip them in – to remind our tongues and the pleasure centers of our brains how sweet life can and hopefully will be in the coming year. This year, however, the honey we’ll be dipping into will have a darker hue and more complex flavor than usual.

The research I’ve been doing on the origins and history of the seven species of the Land of Israel (wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates, olives and honey) has changed the way I understand this last and sweetest of the seven.

Nogah Reuveni, one of the pioneering scholars of Israel’s biblical agricultural landscape, astutely observed that, of all the seven species, there is only one which is not a plant or plant product (guess which).  While today, we think of honey as what comes out of a beehive, in ancient times, it referred to any sweet syrup made out of boiled-down fruit.

“Half a loaf,” they say, “is better than none.”  But it’s hard for me to cheer when I have half a challah left after Shabbat, doomed to sit on the counter, uneaten until it’s inedible, or tossed into the back of a freezer and forgotten until the pre-Passover clean up and then burned with the chametz.

We’ve been trying especially hard, recently, not to waste food – but when it comes to leftover challah, the challenge is twofold: For one thing, there are four people in my family and 15 slices in the average bakery loaf; you do the math. For another, halakha (Jewish law) requires that two full, un-sliced loaves appear at both the Friday night meal and again on Saturday as a reminder of the double portion of manna that fell from heaven before Shabbat when the Israelites were wandering in the desert. A lovely tradition – but it means the bread left over from supper can’t just be used up at the next day’s lunch.

That’s just one of the many reasons I bake my own challah: I can shape each loaf to the exact size I’ll actually need on a given Shabbat, depending on whether we’re expecting guests. And when I’m too tired/hot/lazy/cranky to bake, I now buy small challah rolls at the bakery, rather than full braids. Yeah, the little round breads look kind of lonely on the big challah board, but honestly, one slice of challah is really enough for each of us.

But even those anti-waste measures aren’t fail-safe – and there are many folks, I know, for whom it just isn’t Shabbos dinner without large, glossy loaves poking their noses out from under a silken challah cover. For all of us, then, I’ve been thinking about delicious ways to use up leftover challah.

Well it seems like the only bees making the news these days are the bees that go missing (apparently they were in Argentina and not hiking the Application Trail) or banned bees.  Unlike several other major cities around the United States such as Chicago and San Francisco, beekeeping is legal.  But, in New York City beekeeping is illegal.  This isn’t really breaking news (we’ve written about this before) but earlier this week a “Beekeepers Ball” was held in order to bring attention to the issue that some people want to make NYC beekeeping a legit activity.   According to the New York Times,

In attendance [on Monday] were New York City beekeepers, aspiring New York City beekeepers, beekeepers not from New York City, friends of beekeepers, friends of bees, people who like to dress as bees, people who like to dress their children as bees, bee-dressed children, one cross-dressing beekeeper, a couple of guys who spend much of their time dressed in armor, fans of honey, fans of local food and a team of French videographers.

I just wrote a new post on beekeeping in New York and local honeys for The Vine. While it’s illegal to keep bees in New York, beekeeping persists and there’s plenty of delicious local honey to prove it.  At a local honey tasting in SOHO some of the local honeys stole the show, and reflected the tastes and intricacies of New York itself.

And for a great video on the topic, Wendy Cohen and the Meerkat Media Arts Collective made a wonderful film on Colony Collapse Disorder and rooftop beekeeping on the East Coast, including in New York City.

Why Poppyseed Hamentaschen Are The Only True Hamentaschen – I share this short formula from my father:

Mohn (poppy seed) + Taschen (pockets) = Mohntaschen (poppy seed pocket pastries)

+ Ha (Hebrew definite article) = Hamohntaschen (Haman’s Pockets) or Purim poppy seed pocket pastries

Now, I LOVE poppyseed filling Hamantashen. And seeds are a traditional food for Purim because Esther is supposed to have eaten nuts and seeds during her fast. But I don’t love all of those ingredients you find when you use a can of poppyseed filing, nor do many of my friends. So, what’s a girl to do? Clearly the answer is, make my own! So I did.

The joy of Diaspora is the variety of experience it brings into our tradition. Almost any kind of food has analogues in every tributary of Jewish heritage and candy is no exception. We’ve sifted through the internet and our cookbook collections to bring you Jewish candy recipes from Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Mediterranean, including, of course, the sticky and celebrated halvah, in its classic sesame rendition and with a serendipitous autumnal twist.

Raw Halvah
(From Arrowhead Mills)

1/2 cup Sesame Seeds (ground)
2 tablespoons Sesame Seeds (whole)
3 tablespoons Raw honey
1/4 cup Sesame Tahini (use the driest part of the jar)
1/8 teaspoon Almond extract

Grind 1/2 cup seeds in a blender. Mix ground seeds, whole seeds, tahini, honey and extract in a bowl all together until thoroughly blended. Roll into small balls or into a long roll and refrigerate.

More after the jump…

What do halva, shakshuka, and attayif (cheese filled pancakes eaten by Muslims on Ramadan) have in common?  They are all Israeli foods featured in The New Book of Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey.  Nextbook recently sat down over dinner with author, Janna Gur, who is the founder and editor of Israel’s leading food and wine magazine, Al Hashulchan Gastronomic Monthly.  Listen to a podcast of what she has to say here.

Purchase Janna’s book, filled with delicious recipes and stunning food photography, here.

Headache, fatigue and a metaphysical hunger for chocolate: the sure signs of sugar withdrawal, and during Pesach 2002, in post-industrial Wisconsin, I had to settle for potato chips and jelly.

Potato chips and jelly. Yep, you heard me. Picture an 18 year old New York-Jewish co-ed with a history of cookie eating and a mom who’s not so good at the whole care package thing. Now combine that with a supermarket kosher section that could fit 80,000 times in the space of this period. I needed something, man, and the matzoh I’d horded from the Madison supermarket one hour’s drive away just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

You won’t notice it on the supermarket shelves or the tables of Jewish America this autumn, but both apples and honey are embattled, and by the same mysterious foe. I’m talking Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and if you think that name sounds like it’s describing a symptom more than a disease, you’re right. CCD, like the similarly vague Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Restless Leg Syndrome in humans, are all named for their symptoms because we don’t know their cause. All we know is that bees are disappearing, abandoning their hives and scattering to the winds, not making honey, not pollinating the flowers and trees, and those minute defectors could cost us far out of proportion with their size.

The various ethical, environmental, and cultural issues surrounding honey have been considered and discussed here on The Jew and the Carrot, both in posts and comments.  Leah has explored whether honey is “kosher” for vegans, and wondered if there’s “any ethics-based diet that *doesn’t* have a little bit of hypocrisy clouding up its ideals.”  Michael Croland from HeebnVegan explained that the issue does little to promote veganism, and pointed us in the direction of this Satya Mag article on the subject.  Meanwhile, Rabbi Shmuel has suggested that we should critically re-examine the Rosh HaShanah custom of dipping apples in honey, and explore alternatives such as maple syrup, while Rabbi Debbie Prinz joined the conversation with a lip smacking guest post on how we can integrate chocolate into our Rosh HaShanah celebrations.

Rather than continue the debate on whether honey is vegan, eco-kashrut, or even just kosher (Leah notes that she has always “puzzled over how eating a food created by a decidedly non-kosher creature could be considered okay for the Tribe”), I’m offering a number of delicious, vegan, kosher, and organic ideas and recipes for a sweet new year.