This is a tale of two cities, each with a venerable Jewish culinary legacy that claims boasting rights to the world’s best bagel. Until now, these parallel universes have existed at a safe distance. But Mile End – a new Quebecois-style restaurant opening next month in Brooklyn - will bring the long-standing New York/Montreal bagel standoff to a head. In preparation, I consulted the experts about which “roll with a hole” steals their hearts, and their stomachs.
Read what they said below – and for more on Mile End, check out my article in Edible Brooklyn.
If you are looking for a Chanukah gift for a foodie (say… yourself!), or some new recipes for any of the Jewish holidays, then there’s a new book out that will be of help. Aviva Allen, author of the 2007 The Organic Kosher Cookbook, has just released a Holiday Edition. Ms. Allen provided me with a free copy for this interview and review.
“I grew up in a family that emphasized food and used it as an organizing principal for family gatherings – which is probably not unfamiliar to The Jew & The Carrot’s readers,” says anti-food-waste activist Jonathan Bloom.
As a freelance writer for the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, Bloom wrote about food and travel. (“My travel articles were about going somewhere else to eat,” he jokes.) Like many Americans, Bloom became increasingly attuned to environmental issues and, he says, “My interests in food and the environment came together for me in 2005, when I volunteered at D.C. Central Kitchen, an organization that rescues food that would otherwise go to waste, and trains homeless people to be chefs using that food.
Maybe it is cliche but they say dinner and a show makes for a great date. I’m hoping so because this weekend my boyfriend and I will be eating at Conni’s Avant Garde Resturant – which is both dinner and a show. But this is not your average local dinner theatre. They are really serious about their local food. I got the chance to talk with some of the folks working on the show about their menu and focus on local food. Below the jump is a brief interview and information on how you can get your own tickets to this fun event.
Many years ago, I escorted some at-risk urban youth to a park. Blinged and tattooed, these kids’ gestures stiffened into armor and their faces hardened into leather expressions of defiance and danger. Then they spotted the recently picked apples that had been brought along for a snack. They lunged, giggling and pushing to get their hands on those apples first. When a butterfly passed overhead the boys tore into a chase, yelling, “A butterfly! A butterfly!”. They held onto their bitten-into apples as they ran. Can urban lives be changed one piece of fruit or vegetable at a time? Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s urban food movement is counting on it.
Rte. 44 is a two-lane rural road more or less in the center of Israel. Coming from Ramla, right before the community of Karme Yosef, sits a square building faced in limestone set back from the road. A modest sign identifies it as Melo Hatene. (The name loosely translates as The Overflowing Cornucopia.) I had passed the building more than once, but had not really given more than a moment’s thought to what this structure – too classy to be a packing shed – was doing in the middle of an agricultural field. It was my sister, stopping to explore while on a bike ride, who discovered what was inside and brought us there.
Daniel Goleman and Gary Hirshberg will appear at the 92 Street Y Wednesday, May 6th at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Enter the code “hazo” for a discount on tickets.They will be discussing the green revolution. Check out Susan Bodnar’s article to read about her interview with Daniel Goleman.
How does yogurt fit into the economy and the environment? Just ask Gary Hirshberg, Chairman, President, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yogurt maker. His recent book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World, addresses issues of greening the economy and ethical business practices.
I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Hirshberg about his book, food culture in America, and his background. A big thanks to Mr. Hirshberg for taking the time to answer our interview questions.
Daniel Goleman and Gary Hirshberg, Chairman, President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms, will appear at the 92nd Street Y Wednesday, May 6th in New York City . Enter the code “hazo” for a discount on tickets. They will be discussing the green revolution.See Lisa Fine’s interview with Hirshberg here.
For those who have read Emotional Intelligence, or Social Intelligence and are still happily acclimating to their newly validated skill set, Daniel Goleman’s energetic new book Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything, will further empower you. For those who have been sagging along unsure of how to prevent a collapsing ecosystem, these pages will suggest that you are not the lowly object of corporate manipulation that you once thought you were. Rather, you are the key to the industrial changes that can alter the course of the international train wreck formerly known as our collective global ecology. Not many non-fiction books are a cover-to-cover read. This one is. It channels all that worrying about the planet into an almost optimistic action plan. The Jew and The Carrot had an opportunity to catch up with Dr. Goleman and ask him a few more questions about his call for consumer activism.
Several years ago, Rabbi Deborah Prinz and her husband Rabbi Mark Hurvitz were traveling in Bayonne, France. While glancing at a placard in one of the museums they were visiting, Rabbi Prinz was shocked to read that Jews had brought the fabrication of chocolate to France in the 17th century. As she would come to realize, Jews played a vital role in of early production and distribution of chocolate in Europe. Even as far back as Christopher Columbus whom some have speculated might have been Jewish and some of his crew may have been converso. If true, then it would have been Jews who brought cacao to Europe.
A few months back on The Jew & The Carrot, we posted about an amazing Israeli social justice organization called Bema’aglei Tzedek, which created an ethical seal for restaurants called Tav Chevrati (social seal). The seal ensures that the restaurant provides basic rights to workers and also basic accessibility to customers with physical disabilities. Started only a few years ago, the Tav Chevrati seal is now on a third of all restaurants in Jerusalem, and is expanding to Tel Aviv and other cities.
I recently had a chance to speak with Bema’aglei Tzedek’s Executive Director, Dyonna Ginsburg (pictured at left) and here her thoughts on the socio-economic gaps in Israeli society, the power of public pressure on the Israeli government, and why she only eats in restaurants with the Tav Chevrati seal.
Enjoy the interview, below the jump!
Rabbi Gordon Tucker is the Senior Rabbi at the Temple Israel Center in White Plains, New York. He served as the Dean of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTA) from 1984 until 1992, and on the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly from 1982 to 2007. His most recent published work, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations
is a translation with commentary of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s three volume work in Hebrew.
Right before Thanksgiving, I had the chance to speak with Rabbi Tucker about his thoughts on Hekhsher Tzedek, how food and social justice connect, and where change comes from in Conservative Judaism (hint, read the title of this post)
Read all about it below the jump (plus – a special, candid photo of Rabbi Tucker on Hazon’s New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride!)…
(x-posted at Jewcy)
Watching Chef Sandy Stollar cook is kind of like having front row seats at the Daytona 500. Born in Queens to a Colombian-Argentinean Jewish family, Stollar embodies all the fast-paced energy of a native New Yorker, and all the credentials to make it in the big city.
Unlike most (ahem, all?) kosher chefs, Stollar trained at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and shined her knives at some of the best non-kosher restaurants in New York City (the Russian Tea Room, Osteria del Circo, etc.) More recently, she started her own private chef business called The Kosher Tomato, which caters to Jewish individuals and families across New York and New Jersey. She also teaches cooking classes at the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn – a school which houses the first accredited kosher culinary training program in America.
Stollar, who was recently featured in the “Heeb 100,” is undoubtedly one to watch in the coming years. Below, she shares which foods she misses most from her pre-kashrut days, her thoughts on why kosher cuisine has such a sketchy reputation, and her favorite ways to make a nice piece of chicken.
What do you get when you cross Friday night with with more than 350 ethically-aware, foodie Jews? Shabbat dinner at Hazon’s Food Conference! The harder question is, what do you feed them?
Bay Area resident, Roger Studley, is currently working to create a kosher, free-range/humanely-slaughtered meat business on the West Coast. In the meantime, he is busy coordinating the schecting and preparation of nearly 20 heritage turkeys, which – if all goes as planned – will be served to conference participants on Shabbat. As far as I know (and as far as my little bit of researching/asking around has revealed), this is the first time a Jewish conference has ever sourced its own kosher meat directly from a local farmer – aside from Hazon’s food conference last year, of course!
The Jew & The Carrot got in touch with Roger to find out how planning was going, and hear his opinion on Agriprocessors, the Jewish vegetarian debate, and his vision for the future of kosher food.
Read the interview below the jump and join the fun by registering for Hazon’s Food Conference here.
Rabbi Julian Sinclair is an author, educator, and economist. He is also the co-founder and Director of Education for Jewish Climate Initiative, a Jerusalem based NGO that is articulating and mobilizing a Jewish response to climate change. Before starting JCI, Julian worked as an economist advising the UK Government and for a British political think tank. Meanwhile, he authored the book Lets Schmooze: Jewish Words Today and is working on completing a Phd in the mystical thought of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Phew!
Sinclair lives in Jerusalem and has been featured on NPR and interviewed for the New York Times by our own Leah Koenig. Hazon is delighted to invite Rabbi Sinclair as a presenter at this year’s Hazon Food Conference, December 25-28, 2008.
Get a sneak peek at what Julian has to say below the jump. And find out more/ register for Hazon’s Food Conference, here!
